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FROM THE FARM 



-TO- 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CHAIR, 

BEING I /^ 

AN ACCURATE AND COMPREHENSIVE ACCOUNT "^f'^ 
-OF- 

THE miFE mHB FUBMO SEBiri©ES 

-OF— 

Gen. JAMES A. GARFIELD, 

THE OHIO FARMER-BOY AND BOATMAN, THE 

SUCCESSFUL UNION GENERAL AND 

BRILLIANT STATESMAN. 

TO WHICH IS ADDED 

The Life of Gen. Chester A. Arthur. 



By JAMES L"). AIcOABE, 

Author of •'Thb Pictorial H.istorv op tie Wokld," " Pathways of the Holy Land," 
■*Th8 Centennial History of the United States," etc.. etc. 

EMBELLISHED WITH FINE STEEL PORTRAITS OF GARFIELD 
AND ARTHUR. AND NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD. 

PUBLISHED BYr ] 3 SO 

THE NATIONAL PUBLISHING CO,, 

Philadelphia, Pa., Chicago, III., St. Louis, Mo., 
^ND Atlanta. Ga. 



lilntered accordiDg to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

J. R. JONES, 

In tlia Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



ii^'' 



^ 



Preface. 



IT is the pride and boast of America, that this is a 
country of self-made men. However humble may 
be the position of a man, it is within his power, in this 
land of equality and Republican Institutions, to attain 
the highest honors within the gift of his fellow-citizens. 
Our history is full of the names of men who, without 
friends or fortune to aid them, have risen by the force of 
their own abilities to the proudest position in the Repub- 
lic — Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Clay, Lincoln and 
their glorious compeers, were all self-made men, and 
carved out their great successes by their own unaided 
efforts. Their example shines out brightly to encourage 
and cheer others who are struggling onward in the road 
by which they climbed to greatness. 

No career in all our history furnishes a more brilliant 
example of this than that of General James A. Garfield. 
Starting as a poor farmer boy, without money, position, 
or influence, compelled to struggle against poverty and 
ignorance, he has raised himself by his own unaided 
efforts to the highest pinnacle of fame. The poor boy 
that drove the mule team of a canal boat is now the 
leader of the Republican party in one of its most critical 



PREFACE. 

struggles. Thanks to the glorious institutions founded 
by our fathers, it has been possible for the genuine merit 
and true ability of the man to win this great success. 

It is natural, therefore, that his countrymen should 
desire to know not only the measure of the success that 
has been won by him, but also the means by which these 
great achievements were accomplished. To meet this 
demand the author has prepared this volume, which 
relates the story of the life of this great man. It is the 
story of unconquerable determination and sublime self- 
reliance, of lofty purpose and inflexible resolve, of incor- 
ruptible integrity and moral courage of the highest type, 
of noble effort and magnificent achievement, of prolonged 
and determined struggle, crowned by the most brilliant 
triumphs. 

The work abounds in copious extracts from the 
speeches and writings of General Garfield, for it is only 
by an intimate acquaintance with his views as set forth 
in these utterances that he can be fairly judged, or intel- 
ligently appreciated. His record is presented here clearly 
and without partiality, that all men may see that his life 
has been free from stain, his services honorable and dis- 
tinguished, and that his claims to the highest place 
within the gift of the American people, rest upon a solid 
foundation of genuine merit and faithful service honor- 
ably performed. 

The work also embraces a concisely written sketch of 
the Life of General Chester A. Arthur, the Republican 
candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the United States. 

Philadelphia, August 10th, 1880. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS. 

Birth and Parentage — Rev. Hosea Balloa— Death of James Garfield's Father 
— A Western Widow — Jules Garfield resolves to keep the Family to- 
gether — Boyhood of James Garfield — Brought up to Hard Work — An 
Industrious Boy — James determines to obtain an Education — A Poor 
Boy's Struggles — The Village School — James makes an excellent lis- 
tener — Becomes a Boatman on the Ohio Canal — Is Promoted— Wishes 
to be a Sailor — A Fortunate Illness — James Garfield makes the Ac- 
quaintance of Samuel D. Bates — Resolves to go to School — At the 
Academy — A Struggle for an Education — Garfield at the Carpenter's 
Bench — Becomes a School Teacher — Leaves the Academy — Finds a 
Friend who helps him to enter College— His Reasons for Selecting 
Williams College — His Career there — Graduates with distinction. 



CHAPTER n. 

PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 

Mr. Garfield joins the Church of the Disciples — Statement of the Religious 
Belief of this Church — Reckless Attacks of Political Enemies upon Mr. 
Garfield's Religious Views — The true state of the Case^Mr. Garfield 
becomes a Professor of Hiram Eclectic Institute — Is made President of 
the College — His life in this capacity — Preaches the Gospel — Growing 
Popularity — Marriage of Mr. Garfield — His Wife — Buys a House — Mr. 
Garfield enters Political Life — Joins the Free Soil Party — Is Elected to 
the State Senate — Services in the Senate — The Secession Troubles — Mr. 
Garfield becomes a Prominent L'nion Leader — Hj^ Position in the Senate 
— A Rising Man — Supports the War Preparations of Ohio— Denounces 
Secession — Ohio's Situation at the Commencement of the Rebellion — 
How the State was Armed and Prepared for the War — Growth of the 
State Militia — Outbreak of the War — Rapid offers of Volunteers — 
Enthusiasm of the People — Services of Mr. Garfield to the State — Sup- 
ports Governor Dennison's War Measures — Is sent to Illinois to Buy 
Arms — Determines to take part in the War. 

(5) 



b CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE CTOLLEGE PRESIDENT BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 

Mr. Garfield organizes a Military Company among his Students— Is made 
Lieutenant-Colonel — Is Promoted to be Colonel of the Forty-second 
Ohio Infantry — Organization and History of the Regiment — A Noble 
Record — The Forty-second ordered to the field — Joins General Buell's 
Army in Ktntucky — Garfield is placed in Command of a Brigade — State 
of affairs in the West — Garfield's first Campaign— An Important Trust 
— The March up the Sandy Valley— The First Blow struck — Rout of 
the Rebel Cavalry — Colonel Garfield wins a handsome Victory over 
Humphrey Marshall at Middle Creek — Flight of Marshall's Forces — 
Garfield sets the Ball of Victory in motion — A true estimate of the 
Victory of Middle Creek — A New Dodge — Out of Supplies — The Flood 
in the Big Sandy — Garfield forces a Steamboat to ascend the River — 
Garfield at the Wheel — A Thrilling Incident — Garfield wins another 
Victory — Drives the Rebels from Pound Gap — Is ordered to Louisville 
— Is congratulated by General Buell in General Orders — Value of his 
Operations. 

CHAPTER IV. 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 

General Garfield given a Brigade in the Army of the Cumberland— Joina 
Buell on the march— Battle of Pittsburgh Landing— General Garfield's 
share in this fight— Takes part in the Pursuit— The Siege of Corinth— 
Garfield's Brigade one of the first to enter the town— Is ordered to re- 
pair the Memphis and Charleston Railroad— Successful performance of 
this duty— Garfield at Huntsville— Detailed for Court-martial duty— 
A severe illness— Ordered to Cumberland Gap— Placed on the Fitz John 
Porter Court martial— Ordered to South Carolina— Battle of Stone 
River— Garfield is appointed Chief of Staff to General Rosecrans— Hia 
duties and serviced in this position— General Rosecrans' quarrels with 
the War Department— Garfield endeavors to harmonize these difBcultiea 
—Rosecrans' delay at Murfreesboro— Reasons for it— Garfield's views 
respecting it— A stinging letter from Rosecrans to Halleck— Garfield's 
advice respecting the Reorganization of the Army— It is disregarded- 
He urges Rosecrans to advance— A Model Military Report— The Army 
moves off— The Tullahoma Campaign— A brilliant success— It was 



jiiiiii, ,,=,;!f!iliii|(^ 




"Ml*''' >.ai,i';i»"'"" ra 



CONTENTS. < 

really due to Garfield— Advance upon Chattanooga— Retreat of Bragg— 
Battle of Cbickamauga— Garfield's share in it— He is promoted to be 
Major-General of Volunteers for his conduct at Chickamauga. 



CHAPTER V. 

GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 

General Garfield Elected to Congress from the Western Reserve District — 
Desires to Remain in the Army— His Reasons for Resigning his Com 
mission and Entering Congress— Character of his District- Reasons for 
his Election— Decides to Leave the Army— Enters Congress— Takes a 
Commanding Position in the House — Appointed to the Military Com- 
mittee—Estimate of him as one of the Leaders of the Republican Party 
—His Habits of Industry— His Mode of Rest— Mr. Long, of Ohio, pro 
poses to Recognize the Southern Confederacy— A Brilliant Invective — 
An Impressive Scene in the House— Delight of the Republicans over 
Garfield's Reply— It Ensures his Success in the House— Mr. Garfield in 
Demand as a Speaker— The Inconvenience of being Too Ready an Orator 
—General Garfield's Account of Congress- Its History— Its Great Ser- 
vices-Its Intimate Connection with the People— How it has become the 
National Mouthpiece and Defender— Congress and the Constitutioa— 
Congress and the President— Congress and the People— A Statesman's 
Views. 

CHAPTER VI. 

GENERAL GARFIELD's CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 

The Wade-Davis Manifesto- General Garfield before the Convention — 
Moral Courage wins the Day— Triumphant Nomination and Election 
ol General Garfield— Is appointed a Member of the Committee of Ways 
and Means — Speech on the Constitutional Amendment- A Grand De- 
DMuciation of Slavery — Speech on the Reconstruction of the Southern 
Biates- Speech on Confiscation — A Reminiscence of the War— Gradual 
Rise of the Negro— How Garfield refused to surrender a Fugitive Slave 
—Speech on State Sovereignty— General Garfield as a Temperance 
Worker— How he shut up a Beer Brewery — A Good Speculation— Gen- 
eral Garfield's Tariff Record— Views of the Iron and Steel Bulletin- 
General Garfield's Course Satisfactory— To the Protectionists— His Real 



CONTENTS. 

Position oa this Question — Re-election of General Garfield to Congress 
— Is made Chairman of the Military Committee — Successive re-elections 
to Congress — Is made Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations — 
Debate on the Civil Appropriation Bill of 1873— General Garfield's mode 
of conducting Public Business — The Salary Grab— General Garfield's 
Course respecting it — Letter to a Friend— Garfield successfully Vindi- 
dicates his Course — A Silly Rumor Refuted — General Garfield urges 
the Repeal of the Salary Bill. 



CHAPTER VIL 

3ENERAL GARFIELD LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION 13 

ELECTED TO THE SENATE. 

Efforts to defeat General Garfield for Congress— His triumphant Re-election 
— The Democrats have a Majority in the House— Garfield loses his Chair- 
manship—One of the Republican Leaders— A sharp Arraignment of the 
Democratic Party — The Democratic Graveyard— Ohio goes Republican — 
General Garfield nominated for United States Senator- Is the Republi- 
can Candidate for Speaker of the House — A Member of two important 
Committees — Becomes the Republican Leader in the House— Garfield 
pours a Broadside into the Democratic Ranks— A Withering Denunciation 
of Democratic Policy— Reply to Mr, Tucker, of Virginia— Garfield breaks 
the Democratic Line— Delight of the Republicans in the House— Com- 
ments of the New York Herald— Appea] in behalf of the Loyal Men of 
the South— Speech on the Judicial Expenses Bill— Speech at Madison 
Wisconsin— Speech at the Andersonville Reunion — Plain Talking on a 
Sad Subject— General Garfield is Elected to the United States Senate — 
His Arrival at Columbus— Reception at the Capital— His Remarks— Ad. 
dress of President Hinsdale on Garfield's Election— Speech of General 
Garfield on Democratic Nullification. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

GENERAL GARFIELD's FINANCIAL RECORD. 

General Garfield's Appointment to the Committee on Banking and Currency 
— His Efforts in Congress in behalf of Honest Money— A Formal State- 
ment of his Views on the Money Question— The Currency Doctrine of 
1863 — Definition of Money — Money as an Instrument of Exchange — 



CONTENTS. y 

Coin as an Instrument of Universal Credit — Statutes cannot Repeal the 
Laws of Value — Paper Money as an Instrument of Credit — Necessity of 
Resumption — A Powerful Argument — General Garfield's Speech on the 
Weaver Resolutions. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE CREDIT MOBILIER AND DE GOLYER CHANGES GENERAL 

Garfield's triumphant vindication. 

History of the Credit Mobilier Scheme— The Pacific Railway— Government 
Aid extended to H. Oakes Ames' Connection with the Road — Congress 
Investigates the Credit Mobilier— General Garfield's sworn Testimony 
before the Committee — He denies all Improper Connection with the 
Scheme— Publishes a Review of the Case— An Exhaustive Discussion 
of the Case— Testimony in the Matter— General Garfield's Response to 
the Charges of 1873— Mr. Ames' Testimony Analyzed— Mr. Ames' 
Memoranda— The Check on the Sergeant-at-Arms- General Garfield's In- 
terviews with Mr. Ames during the Investigation — Conclusions — Trium- 
phant Vindication of General Garfield— All the Charges against him — 
Letter of Judge Poland— General Garfield Unanimously Acquitted of 
Wrong-doing — The De Golyer Pavement Company — Charges against 
General Garfield— His Triumphant Vindication of hia Course— The 
Truth established at last. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CHICAGO CONVENTION. GENERAL GARFIELD NOMINATED 

FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The Chicago Convention — Description of the Hall — General Garfield a Del- 
egate from Ohio — Cordial Reception by the Convention— Opening of 
the Proceedings— The First Day's Work — Events of the Second Day— 
The Struggle between Grant and Blaine— Parliamentary Skirmishing — 
Proceedings of the Third Day — Report of the Committee on Credentials 
— The Evening Session— The Fight over Illinois — The Fourth Day's 
Session — The Grant Lmes show Signs of Weakness — Garfield's Mas- 
terly Management of the Ohio Delegation— Nomination of Candidates 
— Blaine and Grant Presented — General Garfield Nominates John Sher- 



10 CONTENTS. 

man— A Noble Speech— The Fifth Day's Session— Balloting for the 
Presidential Candidates— A Stubborn Fight— A Detailed Statement of 
the Ballots— The Sixth and Last Day— Wisconsin Votes for Garfield— 
The General endeavors to Stop the Movement in his Favor — He is un- 
successful—The Break to Garfield— The Thirty-sixth Ballot— Garfield 
Nominated for the Presidency— Exciting Scenes in the Convention— 
The Nomination Made Unanimous— Nomination of Vice-President— 
How Garfield's Nomination was brought about— Platform of the Re- 
publican Party for 1880. 



CHAPTER XI. 

GENERAL GARFIELD SINCE THE CHICAGO CONVENTION. 

The Nomination unsought by General Garfield— Congratulatory Telegrams 
— How the News was received in Congress — Scene in the House — Gen- 
eral Garfield notified of his Nomination— His Reply— Returns Home — 
Reception at Cleveland — General Garfield presides at the Reunion of 
Hiram College— His Speech on that Occasion — A Glance at the Past — 
Reception at Mentor — Visit to Painesville — General Garfield addresses 
his Neighbors— Sunday at Home- General Garfield returns to Wash- 
ington City — His Journey — A Serenade at Washington — Speech of Gen- 
eral Garfield — Adjournment of Congress— Fourth of July Speech at 
Painesville- General Garfield's Letter accepting the Nomination for the 
Presidency — Personal Characteristics— General Garfield's Washington 
Home— The Farm at Mentor — The Garfield Family. 

CHAPTER, XII. 

Birth and Parentage — College Life — Teaches a Country School — Studies 
Law — Admitted to Practice — Settles in New York — Marries the Daugh- 
ter of a Hero — Defends two Fugitive Slaves — Carries his Case to a Tri- 
umphant Issue — Appointed Engineer-in-Chief of Governor Morgan's 
StafiF— An Honorable Record — Refuses to accept Presents for his Public 
Services — His Record on Civil Service Reform — Made Collector of tha 
Port of New York — Puts a stop to Frauds upon the Government — At- 
tempts to fasten Charges of Fraud upon Him are Unsuccessful — Re- 
moved from Office by President Hayes — Offered the post of Consul 
General to Paris — Refuses it — Personal Appearance — Nominated for 
Vice-President — His Letter of Acceptance, • 



^^.^ llllllllffl 




^liiiiiM^^^^^^ iiiiiiiii 



THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES 

OF 

JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



CHAPTER I. 

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS. 

Birth and Parentage — Rev. Hosea Ballou — Death of James Garfield's Father 
— A Western Widow— Jules Garfield resolves to keep the Family to- 
gether — Boyhood of James Garfield — Brought up to Hard Work — An 
Industrious Boy — James determines to obtain an Education — A Poor 
Boy's Struggles — The Village School — James makes an excellent lis- 
tener — Becomes a Boatman on the Ohio Canal — Is Promoted— Wishes 
to be a Sailor — A Fortunate Illness — James Garfield makes the Ac- 
quaintance of Samuel D. Bates — Resolves to go to School — At the 
Academy — A Struggle for an Education — Garfield at the Carpenter's 
Bench — Becomes a School Teacher — Leaves the Academy — Finds a 
Friend who helps him to enter College — His Reasons for Selecting 
Williams College — His Career there — Graduates with distinction. 

James Abraham Garfield was born in the village of 
Orange, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, about twelve miles 
from Cleveland, on the 19th of November, 1831. His 
parents were both of New England extraction. His 
father was Abraham Garfield, a native of Otsego County, 
New York, but the ancestors of Abraham Garfield had 
2 



18 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

resided in Massachusetts for generations. Ilis mother's 
maiden name was Eliza Ballou. She was a native of 
New Hampshire, and was a niece of the Rev. Hosea Bal- 
lou, one of the most distinguished Universalist divines of 
his day.* 

James Garfield was the youngest of four .sons. When 
he was scarcely two years old his father died, in 1833, 
leaving his family in straitened circumstances. The 



* As tlie connection between General Garfield and his distingnislied 
great uncle is exceedingly interesting, we quote here the following briet 
biography of the latter : 

" Hosea Ballou. — An American clergyman, born at Eichmoud, N. H., 
April ?,0, 1771, died at Boston, June 7, 1853. He was the son of a Baptist cler- 
gyman, who was conscientiously opposed to receiving any remuneration 
for his professional services, and consequently he had so few advantages of 
education, that in learning to write he was obliged to use birch bark instead 
of paper, and charcoal instead of pen and ink. At the age of nineteen 
he joined the Baptist church under his father's care, but, having declared 
his belief in the final salvation of all men, he was excommunicated. He 
began to preach at the age of twenty-one, and in 1794 was settled at Dana, 
Mass. In 1801 he removed to Barnard, Vermont, while in 1804 he wrote 
his ' Notes on the Parables' and ' Treatise on the Atonement.' In 1807 he 
became pastor of the Universalist church in Portsmouth, N. H. In 1815 
be removed to Salem, Mass., and in 1817 to Boston, where he became pastor 
of the Second Universalist church, in which location he continued for thirty- 
five years. In 1819 he commenced the ' Universalist Magazine,' which 
he conducted alone for several years, and afterwards in conjunction with the 
Kev. Tlxomas Whitemore. In 1831, aided by his grand-nephew, Hosea Bal- 
lou, he commenced the ' Universalist Expositor,' a quarterly publication, 
to which he continued to contribute until his death. Among his published 
works, besides those mentioned, are 26 ' Lecture Sermons,' 20 ' Select Ser- 
mons,' an ' Examination of the Poctrine of Future Retribution (1846), and 
a volume of poems, mostly hymns, many of which are embodied in the ' Uni- 
versalist Colleciion' edited by Adams and Chapin. He preached more than 
ten thousand sermons, none of which were written till after their delivery. 
Two of his brothers, Benjamin and David, also became Universalist preach- 
ers. Two memoirs of him have been published, one by his son, M. M. Bal- 
' ou, the other by Thomas Whitemore (1854)." — The American Encyclo- 
pedia, Vol. II. p. 34o. 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS. 19 

support of the family devolved entirely upon Mrs. Gar- 
field, but fortunately for her boys she was a vroman of 
rare energy and excellent business qualities. The friends 
of General Garfield are unanimous in declaring that it is 
from his mother that he inherits his capacity for work, 
and the patience and perseverance he dispLiys in the ac- 
complishment of his ends. Mrs. Garfield was determined 
from the moment of her husband's death that the family 
should not be separated, but should be kept together 
as when the father was living. To accomplish this re- 
quired a hard struggle, but she was a woman of strong 
faith and courage, and with the aid of her three elder 
boys managed to gain a frugal support from the little 
farm left to her by her husband. Young as he was, 
James was obliged to do what he could in the work of 
the farm, and in this way learned the habits of indus- 
try which have distinguished his manhood, and laid the 
foundation of his strong and vigorous constitution. He 
worked with a will, for he liked it, and even as a child 
detested idleness. When but a little fellow, it was said 
of him by the neighbors, that he had " not a lazy hair in 
his head." The farm was poor, and it required constant 
and hard work from all the family to get a living out 
of it. 

From his earliest years, James was anxious to obtain 
a good education ; but the prospect before him was dis- 
couraging. He was a poor boy, and without friends who 
could assist him. Whatever he accomplished in life must 
be by his own exertions. This conviction became im- 
planted in his mind at a very early day, and gave to him 
an earnestness of character and resoluteness of purpose 



20 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

remarkable in one so young. During the summer months 
he worked on the little farm, and in the winter he worked 
at the carpenter's bench, his friends thinking it best that 
a poor boy with his way to make in the world, should be 
master of some good useful trade. When he had suf- 
ficientl}^ mastered the rudiments of this trade, the neigh- 
bors employed him in such simple jobs as he was capable 
of performing, and in this way he was able to earn a 
little money. 

All this while he could neither read nor write, yet 
he was by no means an ignorant boy. There was in 
Orange a so-called village school, where the villagers 
met in the evening during the long winters, to read and 
discuss such books as they possessed and the newspapers 
that came to them by the mail. Young Garfield was a 
constant attendant and an eager listener, and in this ca- 
pacity picked up considerable useful information. No one 
would have dreamed that the illiterate boy who drank 
in so eagerly the prosy sentences of the county paper, 
would one day be the brilliant and accomplished leader of 
a great party, and a candidate for the highest honors in 
the gift of his countrymen. What a lesson of hope and 
encouragement does such a life hold out to the young 
and struggling men of America. The same means by 
which this man rose to fame, are open to every one who 
will use them as faithfully and honorably as he did. 

This constant attendance upon the village school but 
increased the desire of young Garfield to obtain an edu- 
cation. But to obtain this money was indispensable, and 
the boy had none. Naturally he began to look about 
him for some avocation which would enable him to earn 




MAP SHOWING THE COUNTRY FROM CHATTANOOGA TO CHICKAMAUGA— THE 
SCENE OF ONE OF GENERAI, GARFIELD'S CAMPAIGNS, 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS. 21 

money, and so obtain the knowledge he craved. The 
Ohio Canal passed within a short distance of the Garfield 
farm, and the lad made many acquaintances among the 
boatmen. From these he learned that the wages paid 
the canal men amounted to more than he could earn by 
his labor on the farm or by carpentering, and that they 
were paid promptly and in cash. He therefore deter- 
mined to become a boatman, and when but seventeen 
years old succeeded in obtaining employment as driver of 
one of the boats. Though his position was humble in the 
extreme, he displayed such fidelity and diligence in the 
discharge of his duties that he attracted the attention of 
his superiors, who promoted him to the post of steersman, 
a position which brought him an increase of wages. He 
held this position for about eighteen months, working 
hard, and laying by as much as he could of his small 
earnings. In the fall of 1848, being dissatisfied with 
canal life, he resolved to take a step forward and ship as 
a sailor on one of the vessels plying on Lake Erie. Be- 
fore he could carry out this resolution, however, he was 
seized with a severe attack of ague and fever, which com- 
pelled him to leave the canal and return to his mother's 
house an invalid. This sickness proved the turning-point 
in his life, and as a result of it, James A. Garfield, in- 
stead of burying himself in the forecastle of a ship, be- 
came one of the leading statesmen of the American 
Republic. 

Young Garfield's illness lasted three months, and 
during this time he became acquainted with Samuel D. 
Bates, a young man engaged in teaching the district 
school that winter. Bates had recently been a pupil at 



22 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the " Geauga Seminary," in an adjoining county, and his 
conversation aroused in the invalid all the old desire to 
obtain an education, which had almost died out under the 
influence of his canal-boat associates. The plan of be- 
coming a sailor was abandoned, and the young man re- 
solved to give all his energies now to the acquirement of 
knowledge. He had managed with the aid of some friends 
to learn to read, and could do simple examples in arith- 
metic, but this was the sole basis upon which he proposed 
to build up the structure of knowledge he meant to rear. 
It was enough, however, for one so ambitious and deter- 
mined. His mother entered fully into his plans and 
hopes, and moreover was able to aid him with a little 
money which she had saved by the most pinching econ- 
omy. With this small capital he started, in March, 1849, 
for the " Geauga Academy," an obscure institution located 
at Chester, a small country village not far from Orange. 
He was accompanied by a cousin and another young man 
from his village. The young men were too poor to pay 
one dollar and fifty cents a week for board, in addition 
to the cost of their tuition, and so they took with them 
frying-pans, dishes, and other cooking utensils. Upon 
reaching Chester they rented a room in an old unpainted 
frame building, not far from the academy, and during 
their stay there " kept house" for themselves. From 
this day James A. Garfield earned his own living, and to 
his credit be it said never possessed a dollar that he had 
not gained by honest and faithful toil. He applied him- 
self with ardor to his studies, for his heart was in his 
work, and failure had become among the impossibilities 
with him. His industry enabled him to distance his com- 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS. 23 

petitors, and he soon took rank as the most promising 
pupil in the academy. During all this while he earned 
his own living. He found work with the carpenters of 
Chester, and his mornings and evenings and Saturdays 
were spent in working in the shop. He earned fair 
wages, and was thus enabled to pay his way as he went. 
As may be imagined, he had few leisure moments ; but 
work with him was a pleasure, and he had the happiness 
and encouragement of feeling that he was surely prepar- 
ing himself for a man's part in the great struggle of life. 
When the summer vacation came, he devoted himself 
steadily to work, and by laying aside his earnings pro- 
vided a fund for the expenses of the fall and spring terms 
at school. During the winter he taught a district school, 
and so added to his income. Thus he kept on for several 
years, teaching in the winter, working at the bench in 
the summer, and attending the academy during the fall 
and spring terms. He practised the most rigid economy, 
laying aside all he could of his earnings, for the purpose 
of paying for a collegiate course, upon which he was now 
resolved to enter. He had the fortune to enjoy excellent 
health during this time. He was a tall, muscular, fair- 
haired country lad in those days, looking a good doal like 
a German in spite of his pure Yankee blood. Healthy in 
mind and body, he was also genial in temper and ever 
ready to oblige a friend. He was a good wrestler and 
ball player as well as a good student, and was a great 
favorite with his classmates and teachers. 

In 1854, Mr. Garfield determined to leave the acad- 
emy, as he felt that he had exhausted its capacity for 
imparting knowledge. He was now twenty-three years 



24 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

old, and it was important that he should lose no time 
in entering college, if he meant to do so at all. During 
the five years he had passed at the academy and at 
work, he had laid by a considerable sum of money for the 
expenses of his collegiate course, and he was confident 
that his hard studies had fitted him to enter the junior 
class at college. But even this would require a two 
years' course at college, and his savings were several 
hundred dollars short of the amount necessary to defray 
his expenses. How was he to raise the balance ? For 
awhile this troubled him greatly ; but friends now came 
to his assistance, and he began to reap in part the reward 
of the good life he had led. His course at the academy 
had established for him a reputation for honesty and per- 
sistency of purpose, which now stood him in good stead. 
A gentleman who had watched his career with great in- 
terest, agreed to advance him the necessary money, taking 
}is security a life-insurance policy, which Mr. Garfield, 
being in excellent health, had no difficulty in securing. 
This loan placed him in possession of sufficient funds to 
carry out his plan. The next step was to determine 
upon a college. After canvassing the merits of various 
institutions, JMr. Garfield chose Williams College, at Wil- 
liamstown, Mass., as the one most suited to his needs. 
Before leaving home, he placed his policy of life insur- 
ance in the hands of his kind friend, as security for 
the loan. " If I live," he said, " I will pay you. If I 
die, you will suffer no loss." The debt was paid soon 
after his graduation, and the creditor has ever since been 
one of Mr. Garfield's closest and most devoted friends, 
reaping a rich reward in the brilliant career of the young 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS. 25 

man he helped to reach fame and honors. Mr. Garfield 
had originally intended to attend Bethany College, the 
institution sustained by the church of which he was a 
member, and presided over by Alexander Campbell, the 
man above all others whom he had been taught to admire 
and revere. But as study and experience had enlarged 
his vision, he had come to see that there were better 
institutions outside the limits of his peculiar sect. A 
familiar letter of his, written about that time, from which 
a fortunate accident enables us to quote, shall tell us 
how he reasoned and acted. 

"There are three reasons why I have decided not 
to go to Bethany : 1st. The course of study is not so 
extensive or thorough as in the Eastern colleges. 2d. 
Bethany leans too heavily toward slavery. 3d. I am 
the son of Disciple parents, am one myself, and have had 
but little acquaintance with people of other views ; and, 
having always lived in the West, I think it will make me' 
more liberal, both in my religious and general views and 
sentiments, to go into a new circle where I shall be under 
new influences. These considerations led me to conclude 
to go to some New England college. I therefore wrote 
to the Presidents of Brown University, Yale, and Wil- 
liams, setting forth the amount of study I had done, and 
asking how long it would t-ike me to finish their course. 

" Their answers are now before me. All tell me I 
can graduate in two years. They are all brief, business 
notes, but President Hopkins concludes with this sen- 
tence : ' If you come here, we shall be glad to do what 
we can for you.' Other things being so nearly equal, 
this sentence, which seems to be a kind of friendly grasp 



26 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

of the hand, has settled the question for me. I shall 
start for Williams next week." 

Some points in this letter of a young man about to 
start away from home to college will strike the reader as 
remarkable. Nothing could show more mature judgment 
about the matter in hand than the wise anxiety to get 
out from the Disciples' influence, and see something of 
other men and other opinions. It was notable that one 
trained to look upon Alexander Campbell as the master 
intellect of the churches of the day, should revolt against 
studying in his college because it leaned too strongly to 
slavery. And in the final turning of the decision upon 
the little friendly commonplace that closed one of the 
letters, we catch a glimpse of the warm sympathetic 
nature of the man, which much and wide experience of 
the world in after years has never hardened. 

Repairing to Williams College, in the fall of 1854, 
Mr. Garfield was admitted to the junior class, his private 
studies having enabled him to master the freshman and 
sophomore courses. His life at Williams opened a new 
experience to him. He was now thrown into the society 
of polished young students, who looked somewhat con- 
temptuously on the rough Western carpenter and farmer 
who had dropped among them. His experience from a 
social point of view was far from pleasant, and he was 
the subject of many rude remarks and much ruder treat- 
ment. He bore all this with patience, though his high 
spirit inwardly chafed at it. He had come to college for 
a fixed purpose, and that purpose he kept steadily in 
view, allowing nothing to swerve him from it. Disregard- 
ing the slights he constantly received, he applied himself 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS. 27 

with energy to his studies, and made a reputation that 
not even those who affected to look down upon him could 
afford to despise. In 1856, two years after his admis- 
sion, he was graduated, bearing off the honors of his class 
in metaphysics, 'a distinction which is regarded as among 
the highest within the gift of the institution to its gradu- 
ating members. This high honor was an ample reward to 
him for all the slights he had endured while struggling 
for it. How his classmates would have smiled had they 
been told that the man they affected to despise was one 
day to become a leader whom they would gladly and en- 
thusiastically follow in one of the greatest contests that 
ever marked the history of the country ! 



CHAPTER 11. 

PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 

Mr. Garfield joins the Church of the Disciples— Statement of the Religious 
Belief of this Church— Reckless Attacks of Political Enemies upon Mr, 
Garfield's Religious Views— The true state of the Case— Mr. Garfield 
becomes a Professor of Hiram Eclectic Institute— Is made President of 
the College— His life in this capacity— Preaches the Gospel— Growing 
Popularity— Marriage of Mr. Garfield— His Wife— Buys a House— Mr. 
Garfield eaters Political Life — Joins the Free-Soil Party— Is Elected to 
the State Senate — Services in the Senate— The Secession Troubles — Mr. 
Garfield becomes a Prominent Union Leader — His Position in the Senate 
— A Rising Man — Supports the War Preparations of Ohio — Denounces 
Secession — Ohio's Situation at the Commencement of the Rebellion — 
How the State was Armed and Prepared for the War — Growth of the 
State Militia— Outbreak of the War— Rapid offers of Volunteers- 
Enthusiasm of the People— Services of Mr. Garfield to the State — Sup- 
ports Governor Dennison's War Measures — Is sent to Illinois to Buy 
Arms — Determines to take part in the War. 

While attending the Geauga Academy, Mr. Garfield 
made a profession of religion, and joined the Disciples' 
Church, a new sect which had spread with great rapidity 
in Ohio, under the influence of the eloquent preaching of 
its founder, Alexander Campbell. The religious belief 
of the Disciples is thus stated by the Rev. Irving A. 
Searles, pastor of the South Side Christian Church, Chi- 
cago : — 

1. We call ourselves Christians or Disciples. The 
term " Campbellite " is a nickname that others have ap- 




GENERAL JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 29 

plied to us, as the early Methodists were called " Rant- 
ers." Good taste forbids the use of nicknames. 

2. We believe in God the Father. 

3. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
the living God, and our only Saviour. We regard the 
divinity of Christ as the fundamental truth in the Chris- 
tian system. 

4. We believe in the Holy Spirit, both as to its 
agency in confession and as an indweller in the heart of 
the Christian. 

5. We accept both the Old and New Testament 
Scriptures as the inspired word of God. 

6. We believe in the future punishment of the wicked, 
and the future reward of the righteous. 

7. We believe the Deity is a prayer-hearing and 
prayer-answering God. 

8. We observe the institution of the Lord's Supper 
on every Lord's Day. To this table it is our practice 
neither to invite nor debar. We say it is the Lord's 
Supper for all the Lord's children. 

9. We plead for the union of all God's people upon 
the Bible and the Bible alone. 

10. We maintain that all the ordinances of the Gos- 
pel should be observed as they were in the days of the 
Apostles. 

11. The Bible is our only creed. 

The Christian Church numbers about 500,000 com- 
municants in the United States. 

Since the nomination of General Garfield for the 

Presidency, some of the more reckless of his political op- 

^ poneuts have endeavored to show that he has no religious 



30 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

belief. Commenting upon this, the Philadelphia Times, a 
journal unfavorable to the Chicago nominations, said re- 
cently : 

" Some of the more reckless organs have assailed 
General Garfield as a religious heretic. While the theory 
of our government is that the religious belief should not 
hinder or promote individual advancement in public trust, 
it is none the less true that this is a Christian govern- 
ment, and that no man could reach the Presidency who 
was not what is commonly accepted as orthodox in his 
faith ; and because General Garfield is not an adherent 
of one of the several leading religious organizations, he 
has been accused of unbelief. Such a charge against him 
is wholly without foundation in fact, and without even 
plausible ground to give the semblance of sustaining it. 

" General Garfield is a religious follower of Alexander 
Campbell, as are a number of prominent men of all politi- 
cal convictions in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, 
Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. Campbell emigrated to 
this country from Ireland, in 1809, and located in Wash- 
ington county, Pennsylvania, near Bethany, West Vir- 
ginia, which subsequently became his home, and where he 
founded a college over which he presided until his death 
at an advanced age. He was a Presbyterian minister, but 
in 1810 he and his father seceded from the Presbyterian 
Church and organized a new society at Brush Run, Penn- 
sylvania, called " Disciples of Christ." They have been 
popularly known as " Campbellites," because of the name 
of their distinguished founder, who was one of the ablest 
theological disputants of his time. The first point of dis- 
pute raised with the Presbyterian Church by Campbell 




MAP SHOWING THE COUNTRY OF THE TULLAHOMA CAMPAIGN— IN WHICH 
GENERAL GARFIELD FIGURED CONSPICUOUSLY. 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 31 

was in rejecting tlie entire Confession of Faith, and 
declaring that the Bible should be the sole creed of the 
new church. Subsequently the Disciples accepted bap- 
tism by immersion, and that, with the free interpreta- 
tion of the Scriptures as members shall choose for them- ' 
selves, sums up the whole faith of the followers of Alex- 
ander Campbell. 

" The Disciples of Christ now number nearly or quite 
half a million of people, and they command the respect 
of all religious denominations by the simplicity and liber- 
ality of their faith. They have no ordained ministry, but, 
like the Quakers, all teach when so moved by the Spirit. 
So far from being unbelievers, they cherish and teach the 
utmost sanctity for both the Old and New Testaments as 
the inspired word of God, and the divinity of Christ is 
one of the fundamental truths of their religious system. 
They simply accept the Bible as their creed, rejecting all 
the creeds of men, and allow the widest latitude of belief 
in the interpretation of the Holy Word. They adminis- 
ter the Sacrament on every Lord's Day, and exhibit their 
opposition to bigotry and intolerance by permitting us to 
join them, as none are invited and none debarred. To 
assume that the believer of such a religious faith is at 
war with the Christian religion, is to make bigotry one 
of the cardinal attributes of Christianity ; and those who 
assail General Garfield because of the choice he has made 
of his church will harm only themselves." 

Mr. Garfield was now twenty-five years old, and was 
about to begin the world for himself in a newer sense. 
As the result of twenty years of hard work he had his 
collegiate education, his diploma, his books, his clothes, 



32 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

good health, a clear conscience, and a debt of four hun- 
dred and fifty dollars. His task now was to find some 
employment that would support him, and enable him to 
discharge his debt. To go back to the carpenter's bench 
was not to be thought of. He had qualified himself for 
a higher place in life, and must now take it. His con- 
nection with the Disciples' Church now shaped his destiny 
as much as did his own inclinations. All his family were 
members of that church, which had a very large following 
in Ohio. In the county of Portage, not far from where 
the Garfields lived, the Disciples had a struggling college, 
called Hiram Eclectic Institute, which undertook to fur- 
nish education and religious training at the lowest possible 
price. It was natural that the young talented Disciple, 
who had just been graduated with distinction in an east- 
ern college, should be attracted to this struggling school. 
He went to Hiram, and was made Professor of Latin and 
Greek. It was no easy place into which he had Mien. 
The college was poor, the professors were poor, the stu- 
dents were poor, and the salaries paid were small, as were 
the tuition fees received. Plain living and high thinking 
was the order of the day at the institute; and there was 
much hard labor to be done on the part of the new pro- 
fessor. It was done with characteristic energy, and from 
the first told well upon the success of the college. At 
the close of his first year Professor Garfield was made 
president of the coUegej and his field of labor was thus 
widened. In this capacity he not only taught and lec- 
tured, but preached also. 

According to the creed of the Disciples, any person 
having the power, was entitled to preach, and the presi- 



i'''i'(, 




PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 33 

dent of the college was expected to deliver a sermon 
every Sunday as a part of his official duty. President 
Garfield preached with great eloquence and effect, and 
his fame spread through the Canipbellite settlement. It 
was this fact that gave rise to the story that he had been 
a minister, a story which he has taken occasion to deny 
publicly on several occasions. Garfield's purpose was to 
be a lawyer, and he had not swerved from it at the time 
he used to talk of religion and a future life to the little 
congregations in the Disciples' meeting house in Northern 
Ohio. The new president was only twenty six years old, 
probably the youngest man that ever held such a posi- 
tion. He carried into his new office the remarkable 
energy and vigor and good sense which are the main- 
springs of his character. He soon doubled the attend- 
ance at the school, raised its standard of scholarship, 
strengthened its faculty, and inspired everybody con- 
nected with it with something of his own zeal and 
enthusiasm. At the same time he diligently prosecuted 
the study of the law, the profession he had marked out 
for himself, but which he has never been called on to 
practise to any extent. He was also an omnivorous 
reader of general literature, and his remarkable memory 
enabled him to retain what he read. The life at Hiram 
was peaceful and pleasant to the hard-working president. 
Hiram is a lonesome village, three miles from a railroad. 
It lies on a high hiU, and overlooks twenty miles of 
cheese-making country to the southward. It contains 
fifty or sixty houses clustered around the green, in the 
centre of which stands the homely red brick college 
structure. The people were very proud of their college 
3 



84 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

president, and lie soon became well known throughont 
Northern Ohio. He was frequently called upon for pub- 
lic speeches, and these added greatly to his reputation 
and popuLirity. 

I Mr. Garfield's place in life now seemed won, and he 
felt at liberty to marry. During his attendance at the 
Geauga Academy, he made the acquaintance of Miss 
Lucretia Rudolph, a pupil, and the daughter of a farmer 
in the neighborhood. The acquaintance ripened into af- 
fection, and the young people entered into an engage- 
ment to be married as soon as the lover should be able to 
assume the responsibility of such a step. In 1857 Mr. 
Garfield and Miss Rudolph were married. The mar- 
riage was one purely of love, and the choice was a wise 
one. Miss Ru<lolph was a refined, intelligent, affectionate 
girl, who shared young Garfield's thirst for knowledge 
and his ambition for culture, and had at the same time 
the domestic tastes and talents which fitted her equally 
to preside over the home of the poor college professor, 
and that of the famous statesman. Mrs. Garfield is a 
quiet th'oughtful woman, and much of her husband's 
prosperity has been due to the gentle influence she 
has exercised over him. She has grown with her 
husband's growth, and has been, during all his career, 
t-he appreciative companion of his studies, the loving 
mother of his children, the graceful, hospitable hostess 
of his friends and guests, and the wise and faithful 
helpmeet in the trials, vicissitudes, and successes of 
his busy life. Immediately upon his marriage, Mr. 
Garfield purchased a cottage, fronting upon the college 
green, and here the young couple began their married 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 35 

life, poor and in debt, but with brave hearts and bright 
hopes for the future. 

Two years after his marriage, General Garfield's polit- 
ical life began. His sermons had attracted great atten- 
tion to him, and the people of bis district began to think 
that so eloquent and forcible a speaker could do them 
good service in other capacities. In 1859 the Anti- 
Slavery party of Portage and Summit counties nominated 
him as their candidate for State Senator, and elected 
him by a large majority. He had taken part in the polit- 
ical campaigns of 1857 and 1858, and had become well 
known as a vigorous local stump orator. Young as he 
was he took a leading position in the State Senate as a 
man unusually well informed on the subjects of legisla- 
tion, and effective and powerful in debate. He seemed 
always prepared to speak, and always spoke with great 
eloquence and force. He did not resign the presidency 
of his college, as he thought a few weeks spent at Colum- 
bus during the winter would not materially interfere in 
the duties of that position, and his associates were anx- 
ious that he should not sever his connection with them. 
His most intimate friend in the Senate was J. D. Cox, 
who subsequently became a major-general of volunteers 
and Governor of Ohio. 

During the session of 1860-61, when the States of 
the South began to secede from the Union, General Gar- 
field's course was outspoken and manly. He declared 
his belief in the right of the general government to coerce 
the seceded States, and spoke eloquently in favor of the 
prompt and vigorous exercise of that power. The Union, 
he maintained, was meant to be perpetual, and the gov- 



36 JAMES A. GAEFIELD. 

ernment should prevent its disruption at any cost. He 
urged upon the State of Ohio the necessity of preparing 
to support the general government with all its resources, 
and avowed his willingness to do his part in behalf of 
the Union should the controversy end in war. His elo- 
quence and energy ranked him among the foremost of 
the Union leaders, and drew upon him the favorable at- 
tention of the entire State. 

Concerning his service in the Senate, Mr. Whitelaw 
Reid, the accomplished author of " Ohio in the War," 
says : " Senator Garfield at once took high rank in the 
legislature. . . His genial, warm-hearted nature served 
to increase the kindness with which both political friends 
and opponents regarded him. Three Western Reserve 
Senators formed the Radical triumvirate in that able and 
patriotic legislature which was to place Ohio in line for 
the war. One was a highly rated professor of Oberlin 
College; another a lawyer already noted for force and 
learning, the son-in-law of the president of Oberlin ; the 
third was one village carpenter and village teacher from 
Hiram. He was the youngest of the three, but he 
speedily became the first. The trials of the next six years 
were to confirm the verdict of the little group about the 
State capitol that soon placed Garfield before both Cox 
and Monroe. The college professor was abundantly sat- 
isfied with the success in life which made him a consul 
at a South American port. The adroit, polished, and 
able lawyer became a painstaking general, who, perhaps, 
oftener deserved success than won it, and who at last, 
profiting by the gratitude of the people to their soldiers, 
rose to be governor of the State, but there (for the time 



PRESIDENT OP A (X)LLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 37 

at least) ended. The village carpenter started lower in 
the race of the war, and rose higher, became one of the 
leaders of our national councils, and confessedly one of 
the ablest among the younger of our statesmen. 

" When the secession of the- Southern States began, 
national considerations came to occupy a large share of 
the attention of the Senate. Mr. Garfield's course was 
manly and outspoken. He was foremost in the very 
small number (only six voting in the line) who thought 
the spring of 1861 a bad time for adopting the Corwin 
constitutional amendment, forbidding Congress from ever 
legislating on the subject of slavery in the States. He 
was among the foremost in maintaining the right of the 
national government to coerce the seceded States. 
* Would you give up the forts and other government 
property in those States, or would you fight to maintain 
your right to them ? ' was his adroit way of putting the 
question to a conservative Republican who deplored his 
incendiary views. He took the lead in revising the old 
statute about treason, with a view to adapting it to the 
instant exigencies. When the ^ Million War Bill,' as it 
was popularly known at the time, came up, he was the 
most conspicuous of its defenders. Judge Key, of Ham- 
ilton county (subsequently a noted member of McClel- 
lan's stuff), preluded his vote for it with a protest against 
the policy of the administration in entering upon the war. 
It was left to Garfield to make the reply. The newspa- 
pers of that day all make mention of his eff'ort in terms 
of the highest admiration. ' He regretted that Senator 
Key should have turned from honoring his country to 
pay his highest tribute of praise, at a time like this, to 



38 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

party. The senator approved a defense of national prop- 
erty, but denounced any effort to rebike it if only it were 
once captured. Did he mean that if Washington were 
taken by the Rebels, he would oppose attempts to regain 
possession of the national capital ? Where was this doc- 
trine of non-resistance to stop ? He had hoped that the 
senator would not, in this hour of the nation's peril, open 
the books of party to re-read records that ought now, at 
least, to be forgotten. But since the senator had thought 
this a fitting time to declare his distrust of the President 
and of the cabinet, and particularly of Ohio's honored 
representative in the cabinet, he had only this to say in 
reply : that it would be well for the senator, amid his 
partisan recollections, to remember whose cabinet it was 
that embraced traitors among its most distinguished rep- 
resentatives, and sent them forth from its most secret ses- 
sions to betray their knowledge to their country's ruin.' " 

Mr. Garfield was determined from the first to resign 
his position in the legislature and enter the army. The 
legislature was still in session when the time for ap- 
pointing the officers of the Ohio troops came, and Gar- 
field did not immediately press his claims for an appoint- 
ment. There was still much to be done in the work of 
preparing the State for war, and in this he took an active 
and leading part. In " Ohio in the War," from which 
we have quoted before, Mr. Whitelaw Reid thus runs up 
what was done in this respect, and the part taken by Mr. 
Garfield : 

" The State of Ohio, which in the next four years 
was to contribute to the national service an army of 
soldiers amounting in the aggregate, according to the 



PRESIDENT OP A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 39 

figures of the Provost- Marshal General, to three hundred 
and ten thousand men, had in 1860 a population of not 
quite two and a half millions. The existence of its ter- 
ritorial organization had only begun a year before the 
century ; but it was already, and as it seemed was likely 
long to remain, the third State in population and wealth 
in the Union. More than half of its area was under cul- 
tivation, and more than half of its adult males were far- 
mers, there being of this class two hundred and seventy- 
seven thousand owning farms, averaging a little over 
ninety acres to each man. So well was this most impor- 
tant body of the State's producers aided by the natural 
fertility of the soil, that they furnished each year more 
than double the entire amount of food, animal and vege- 
table, that was needed for the support of the whole popu- 
lation of the State. In 1860 they exported nearly two 
■million barrels of flour, over two and a half million bush- 
els of wheat, three million bushels of other grains, and 
half a million barrels of pork. The value of the exports 
of agricultural products for that year from Ohio swelled 
to fifty-six and a half million dollars. 

" Not less industrious and prosperous were the manu- 
facturers of the State. The value of their products for 
1860 was over one hundred and twenty-two millions of 
dollars, an increase of ninety-eight per cent, in a single 
decade. The city of Cincinnati alone, where Indians 
were trading wampum and buying blankets when New 
York had already attained the rank of the metropolis of 
the continent, manufactured in 18(i0, sixteen million dol- 
lars worth of clothing, a larger quantity than New York 
itself produced in the same year. 



40 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" But the wealth of the State and the welfare of her 
people, so eloquently illustrated in figures like these, may 
perhaps be more clearly presented in a briefer statement. 
The assessed value of her taxable property rose in 1860 
to nearly a thousan<l million dollars ; while, by the esti- 
mate of her Commissioner of Statistics, the entire debts 
of the people would not amount to twenty per cent, of 
that valuation. Let us not fail to add that, by the benef- 
icent legislation of the State, none of her children were 
growing up without the free gift of an education that 
should fit them for the duties of citizenship; that there 
were published and mainly circulated within her borders 
twenty-four daily newspapers, two hundred and sixty- 
five weeklies, and fifty-four monthlies, making in the ag- 
gregate seventy-two million copies ; and that so general 
w^as the devotion to religion and the provision for relig- 
ious instruction, that the church edifices in the State con- 
tjdned sittings enough for the entire population of the 
State. 

" The impending war was to have for its essence the 
spirit of hostility to the existence, or at least to the 
power of the system of human slavery ; and so it comes 
that the position of the State on this subject is not less 
essential to a comprehension of her great part in the 
struggle, than is an appreciation of her wonderful pro- 
gress and resources. The political conservatism which 
prosperity and accumulating wealth naturally engender, 
was further favored in Ohio by the circumstances of her 
settlement and geography. Along four hundred and 
thirty-six miles of her border lay slave States. From 
these many of her pioneers had come ; many more 



'Mu 



Mi 
I ill, 



i 



"fc 




PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 41 

traced With Kentuckians and West Virginians their com- 
mon _ lineage back to the eastern slope of the ancient 
Dominion. In time of war the most effective support 
to the exposed settlements of the infant State had come 
n-om their generous and warlike neighbors across the 
Uhio In the long peace that followed, the heartiest 
Iriendships and warmest social attachments naturally 
went out to those who had been proved in the hour of 
tnal. If her churches on every hillside taught a re- 
ligion which found no actual warrant in the Bible for the 
system of human slavery, they at least had no difficulty 
in believing that the powers that be are ordained of 
(^od, and by consequence in enforcing a toleration which 
proved quite as acceptible across the border as the most 
exhaustive scriptural exegesis. North of the National 
Koad, which for many years was the Mason and Dixon's 
Ime of Ohio politics, different views prevailed ; and the 
people, tracing their ancestry to Puritan rather than Vir- 
ginia stock, cherished different feelings ; but the southern 
ml of (he State, being mote populous and more influen- 
tial long controlled the elections, and inspired the temper , 
01 the government and the legislation. 

" \^^'^ Presidential contest of 1848, the electoral vote 
01 the State was thus thrown for Lewis Cass. In 1852 
It wjis in like manner given to Franklin Pierce. But by 
this time a change had begun. In the very heart of the 
conservative feeling of the State, one of the foremostlaw- 
3'ers of the city of Cincinnati had for years been keepino- 
up an antislavery ngitation. He had found a few, like- 
minded with himself, but society and the church had 
combined to frown him down. Still, so single-minded an! 



42 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

sincere was he, that, though the most ambitious of men, 
he resolutely faced the popular current, shut his eyes to 
all hope of political advancement, and daily labored at 
the task of resisting the pretentions of slavery, giving 
legal protection to the friendless and helpless negroes, 
and diilusing an abolition sentiment among the conserva- 
tive men of the border, and the influential classes of the 
great city of the State, whose prosperity was supposed to 
depend upon her intimate relations and immense trade 
with the slave-holding regions to the south of her. To 
this task he brought some peculiar qualifications. Pro- 
foundly ignorant of men, he was, nevertheless, profoundly 
versed in the knowledge of man. The baldest charlatan 
might deceive him into trusting his personal wortii, but 
the acutest reasoner could not mislead him in deter- 
mining the general drift of popular sentiment, and the 
political tendencies of the times. Conscious of abili- 
ties that might phice him in the front rank of our states- 
men, his sagacity, not less than his conscience, taught 
him to take Time for his ally, and lightly regarding the 
odium of his present work, to look confidingly to the 
larger promises of the future. Loving personal popu- 
larity, he was entirely destitute of the qualifications for 
attaining it. Really warm-hearted and singularly tena- 
cious in his attachments, he was perpetually regarded 
as utterly selfish and without capacity for friendship ; so 
that his defects, no less than his merits, shut him up 
to a course which could hope for personal triumph only 
in the triumph of great principles. He was gifted by 
nature witli a massive and cogent eloquence, little likely 
to sway the immediate passions of the populace, but 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 43 

sure to infiltrate the judgment and conscience of the 
controlling classes in the community. His energy was 
tireless, and his will absolutely inflexible. 

" Under such leadership, ably seconded by the faith- 
ful and true old man who so long stood in Ohio the 
champion of Abolition, pure and simple, and the peculiar 
representative of the Reserve, a new element sprang up 
in Ohio politics. It cast a handful of votes for Birney 
for the Presidency ; had risen to proportions which made 
it a respectable element in political calculations, when it 
cast, what was thought to be, the vote of the balance of 
power for Van Buren ; and had reached the height of its 
unpopularity with the old ruling class of the State when, 
in 1852, refusing to sustain General Scott on account of 
the ' anti-agitation' and ' finality of the slavery question' 
features in his platform, it persisted in again giving the 
votes of its balance of power to John P. Hale, and thus 
permitting the triumph of Franklin Pierce. 

" But before another Presidential election the shrewd 
calculations of the sagacious leader of this outcast among 
parties had been realized. Holding, as has been seen, 
the balance of power, and subordinating all minor ques- 
tions to what they regarded as the absorbing issue of 
slavery or antislavery, they had already, with a handful 
of votes, controlled a great election, and sent this Aboli- 
tion leader to the United States Senate. A greater 
triumph now awaited him. As dexterous in managing 
parties as he was blind in managing men, he placed such 
stress upon the new organization which bad risen upon 
the ruins of the old Whig party, that, detesting his 
principles and distrusting himself, they were, neverthe- 



44 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

less, forced to secure the votes without which the elec- 
tion were lost in advance, by placing his name at the 
head of their ticket, and bearing the odious Abolitionist 
in triumph into the chair of the chief executive of the j 

State. The impulse thus given was never wholly lost ; 
for though the people were by no means as radical as 
their governor, they gave at their next Presidential 
election a handsome majority to Fremont, and a year 
later again elected their Abolition leader. 

" Whether it was through a far-seeing anticipation of 
what was to grow out of this antislavery struggle, or 
whether it was only a result of the sagacious forecast 
which in most things distinguished his administration, 
Governor Chase early began to attempt an effective or- 
ganization of the militia. In this, as in his political 
views, he was in advance of his times. In every State 
west of the Alleghanies the militia had fallen into undis- 
guised contempt. The old-fashioned militia musters had 
been given up ; the subject had been aban<loned as fit 
only to be the fertile theme for the ridicule of rising 
writers and witty stump orators. The cannon issued by 
the Government were left for the uses of political parties 
on the occasion of mass meetings or victories at the polls. 
The small arms were scattered, rusty, and become worth- 
less. In Chicago a novel drill had been an inducement for 
the organization of the Ellsworth Zouaves, and here and 
there through the West the young men of a city kept up a 
military company ; but these were the exceptions. Popu- 
lar prejudice against doing military duty was insurmount- 
able, and no name for these exceptional organizations so 
struck the popular fancy as that of ' Corn-stalk Militia.' 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 45 

" Governor Chase at once essayed the formation df 
similarly uniformed and equipped militia companies at all 
leading points throughout the State, with a provisional 
organization into regiments and brigades. At first the 
popular ridicule only was excited ; by and by attention to 
the subject was slowly aroused. Some legislative support 
was secured, a new arsenal was established ; an issue of 
new arms was obtained from the general government; 
and an approximation was at last made to a military peace 
establishment. Such was the interest finally excited 
that at one time a convention of nearly two hundred 
officers assembled at Columbus to consult as to the best 
means of developing and fostering the militia system ; 
and the next year, before going out of office, Governor 
Chase had the satisfaction of reviewing, at Dayton, nearly 
thirty companies, assembled from diffi3rent parts of the 
State — every one of which was soon to participate in the 
war that was then so near and so little anticipated. His 
successor continued the general policy thus inaugurated, 
urged the legislature to pay the militia for the time spent 
in drill, and enforced the necessity of expanding the 
system. Comparatively little was accomplished, and yet 
the organization of Ohio militia was far superior to that 
existing in any of the States to the westward. All of 
them combined did not possess so large a militia force as 
the First Ohio Regiment, then under the command of 
Colonel King, of Dayton. 

" Thus, materially prosperous and politically progres- 
sive, yet with much of the leaven of her ancient conser- 
vatism still lingering, and with the closest affiliations of 
friendship and trade with the slave-holding States of the 



46 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Ohio and Mississippi valleys, but with the germs of a 
preparation for hostilities, and such a nucleus of militia 
as might serve to protect the border from immediate 
ravages, Ohio entered upon the year that was to witness 
the paralysis of her industry and trade, the sundering of 
her old friendships, her political revolution, and the devo- 
tion of her entire energies to the business of war. 

" The legislative and executive departments of the 
State government, upon which were precipitated the 
weightiest burdens of the war, had been chosen as repre- 
sentatives rather of the average antislavery progress of the 
Whig party, than of the more advanced positions to which 
ex-Governor Chase had been committing his supporters. 
Great pains were taken to welcome the legislatures of 
Kentucky and Tennessee on their visit to Columbus, and 
to convince them of the warm friendship borne them, not 
less by the government than by the people of the State. 
Union-saving speeches and resolutions marked the popular 
current; and, as had long been usual, the Union-saving 
temper went largely toward the surrender to the South 
of everything save the absolutely vital points in contro- 
versy. The governor, in his inaugural address, while 
firmly insisting upon hostility to the extension of slavery, 
had also advocated the colonization of the blacks in Cen- 
tral or South America, and faithful obedience to what 
were regarded as our constitutional obligations to the 
slave-holding States. A leading member of the party in 
the Senate* had introduced a bill to prevent by heavy 
penalties the organization or the giving of any aid to 

* Hon. 11. D. Harrison, nfterward elected from the Seventh District, to 
succeed ex-Governor Corwin in Congrees. 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 47 

parties like John Brown's, and it had come within three 
votes of a passage. 

" More striking proof of the conciliatory disposition 
with which the legislature was animated was to be given. 
The constitutional amendment carried through Congress 
by Thomas Cor win, and submitted to the legislatures of 
the several States for ratification, provided that hereafter 
no amendment or other change in the powers of govern- 
ment should be permitted, w^hereby the national authori- 
ties should be enabled to interfere with slavery within it^ 
present limits. Before the beginning of actual hostilities 
in Charleston Harbor, it was apparent that, carrying 
the eflort for conciliation to the farthest extreme, the 
heavy Republican majority in the legislature meant to 
give the sanction of Ohio to this irreversible guarantee to 
slavery in the fundamental law of the land. Before its 
place on the Senate calendar was reached, however, canie 
the bombardment of Sumter, the surrender, and the call 
of the President to protect the capital from the danger 
of sudden capture by the conspirators. On the 15th of 
April, Columbus was wild with the excitement of the call 
to arms. On the IGth the feeling was even more intense; 
troops were arriving, the telegraphs and mails were bur- 
dened with exhortations to the legislature to grant money 
and men to any extent ; the very air came laden with 
the clamor of war, and of the swift, hot haste of the peo- 
ple to plunge into it. On the 17th, while every pulse 
around them was at fever-heat, the senators of Ohio, as a 
last effort, passed the Corwin constitutional amendment, 
only eight members out of the whole Senate opposing it.* 

* The «!ight who bad the foresight to perceive that the 17th of April. 



48 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" But this was the last effort at concniation. Thence- 
forward the State strove to conquer rather than to com- 
promise. Ah-eady, on the 16th of April, within less than 
twenty-four hours after the President's call for troops 
had been received, the Senate had matured, carried 
through the several readings, and passed a bill appropria- 
ting one million of dolhirs for placing the State upon a 
war footing, and for assisting the general government in 
meeting the shock of the rebellion.* 

" The debate which preceded the rapid passage of 
this bill illustrated the melting away of party lines under 
the white heat of patriotism. Senator Orr, the Demo- 
cratic representative of the Crawford County Senatorial 
District, ' was opposed to the war, and even to the pur- 
poses of the bill, but he should vote for it as the best 
means of testifying his hostility to secession.' Judge 

1861, was not a time to be striving to add security to slavery were, Messrs. 
Buck, Cox, Garfield, Glass, Monroe, Morse, Parrish, and Smith. 

* Some days earlier a bill had been introduced appropriating a hundred 
thousand dollars for war purposes. On a hint from the executive that per- 
haps other and more important measures might be needed, action was de- 
layed. Then the million war bill was introduced, in response to a message 
from Governor Dennison, announcing the call from Washington, maintain- 
ing the necessity for defending the integrity of the Union, and concluding 
as follows : 

" But as the contest may gmw to greater dimensions than is now antici- 
pated, I deem it my duty to recommend to the General Assembly of this 
State to make provisions proportionate to its means to assist the National 
authorities in restoring the integrity and strength of the Union, in all its 
amplitued, as the only means of preserving the rights of all the States, and 
insuring the permanent peace and prosperity of the whole country. I ear- 
nestly recommend, also, that an appropriation of not less than four hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars be immediate y made for the purchase of arms 
and equipments for the use of the volunteer militia of the State. I need 
not remind you of the pressing exigency for the prompt organization and 
arming of the military force of the State." 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 49 

Thomas M. Key, of Cincinnati, the ablest Democrat in 
the Senate, followed.* He, too, was in favor of the bill. 
' Yet he felt it in his soul to be an unwarranted declara- 
tion of war against seven sister States. He entered his 
solemn protest against the line of action announced by 
the executive. It was an usurpation by a President, in 
whom and in whose advisers he had no confidence; it 
was the beginning of a military despotism. He firmly 
believed it to be the desire of the administration to drive 
off the border States, and permanently sever the Union. 
!But he was opposed to secession, and in this contest 
he could do no otherwise than stand by the stars and 
stripes.' Next came Mr. Moore, of Butler county, con- 
spicuous as the most conservative of those reckoned at 
all with the Republican party in the Senate ; in fact as 
almost the ideal of the old ' Silver-Gray Whig.'f Hith- 
erto he had voted consistent!}'- against all military bills, 
and had even avowed his readiness to surrender the 
Southern forts rather than bring on a collision. ' Now 
he felt called upon to do the most painful duty of his hfe. 
But there was only one course left. He had no words of 
bitterness for party with which to mar the solemnity of 
the hour. This only he had to say : He could do noth- 
ing else than stand by the grand old flag of the country, 
and stand by it to the end. He should vote for the bill.' 
" Thus, to recur to the figure already used, did the 
iron rules of party discipline and prejudice, melting be- 
neath the white heat of patriotism, still mark in broken 
outline the old divisions beneath and through which the 

* Subsequently colonel and judge-advocate on McClellan'a staff. 
f Subsequently colonel of one of the hundred days' regiments. 
4 



50 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

molten currents freely mingled. The bill passed by an 
almost unanimous vote ; one senator only, Mr. Newman, 
of Scioto county, voting against it.* 

" In the House, however, party opposition gave way 
more slowly. That same afternoon the bill went over 
from the Senate, and an effort was made to suspend the 
rules, so as to put it upon its passage. The Democrats 
demanded time for consultation. Mr. Wm. B. Woods f 
(ex-Speaker and Democratic leader) gave notice that it 
could not be unanimously passed without time were 
given. For one, he wanted to hear from his constituents. 
Mr. Geo. W. Andrews,! of Auglaize county, denounced 
the excitement on the subject of war, here and over the 
country, as crazy fanaticism. Mr. Devore, of Brown 
county, ' regarded the interests of the country, south of 
the Ohio River as well as north of it. The despatches 
about the danger to Washington were preposterous, and 
were mostly manufactured for evil purposes.' Mr. Jes- 
sup, of Hamilton county, gave notice that if the majority 
wanted his vote they must wait for it. And so, the Re- 
publicans agreeing to delay in the hope of securing har- 
mony, the bill went over, after two ineffectual efforts to 
suspend the rules. || 

* Under the terrible pressure of public condemnation, especially in his 
own district, Mr. Newman shortly afterward asked leave to change his vote. 

f Subsejjuently colonel of a three years' regiment, and brevet major- 
general of volunteers. 

X Subsequently Colonel of the Fifteenth Ohio in the three months' ser- 
vice, and Lieutenant-Colonel, until after the Clarksville surrender, of the 
Seventy- fourth Ohio. 

] In these efifbrta twenty five Democrats voted against suspending the 
rules, fourteen voted with the Republicans for suspension, and eight were 
absent when the roll was called. 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 51 

" The next day, the Democrats having in the mean- 
time spent three hours in excited debate in caucus, the 
effort to suspend the rules again failed. But the leaders 
earnestly assured the house that with another day's de- 
lay there was a strong probability of the unanimous pas- 
sage of the bill. A despatch had already been received 
from Scioto county, denouncing Senator Newman for his 
vote against it in the Senate, and it was said that his son 
was enlisted in one of the companies then on the way to 
Columbus. Mr. Hutcheson, of Madison county, an ex- 
treme States'-Rights Democrat, and almost a secessionist, 
spoke handsomely in favor of the bill, and drew out 
hearty applause from house and galleries. But delay 
was still insisted upon, and so the bill went over to the 
third day from the date of its introduction. 

" Then all were ready. Ex-Speaker Woods led off 
in a stirring little speech, declaring his intention ^ to 
stand by the Government in peace or in war, right or 
wrong.' Mr. William J. Flagg, of Hamilton county, 
followed. * He was glad that delay had produced una- 
nimity. But he had been of the number that had favored 
instant action. He had done so because Jefferson Davis 
had shown no hesitation in suspending the rules, and 
marching through first, second, and third readings with- 
out waiting to hear from his constituents. He had ever 
advocated peace, but it was always peace for the Union. 
Now he was read}^ for peace for the Union, or war for it, 
love for it, hatred for it, everything for it.' Mr. Andrews, 
of Auglaize county, had less to say of the crazy fanati- 
cism of the excitement. * The act of South Carolina to- 
ward the Democrats of the North was a crime for which 



52 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the English language could find no description. It had 
forever severed the last tie that bound them together.' 

"Amid such displays of feeling on the part of the 
opposition, the bill finally went through, on the 18th of 
April, by an unanimous vote ; ninety-nine in its favor. 
It appropriated lialf a million dollars for the purpose of 
carrying into effect any requisition of the President to 
protect the national government ; four hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars for the purchase of arms and equipments 
for the militia of the State ; and the remaining fifty thou- 
sand as an extraordinary contingent fund for the gov- 
ernor. The Commissioners of the Sinking Fund were 
authorized to borrow the money, at six per cent, interest, 
and to issue certificates therefor which should be free from 
State taxation. 

" Meantime the Senate, under the leadership of Mr. 
Garfield, had matured and passed a bill defining and pro- 
viding punishment for the crime of treason against the 
State of Ohio. It declared any resident of the State who 
gave aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States 
guilty of treason against the State, to be punished by im- 
prisonment in the penitentiary at hard labor for life.* 

"With the passage of these bills all semblance of 
party opposition to necessary war measures disappeared 
from the proceedings of the legislature. Mr. Vallandig- 
ham visited the capital and earnestly remonstrated with 
the Democrats for giving their sanction to the war ; but 
the patriotic enthusiasm of the crisis could not be con- 
trolled by party discipline. Under the leadership of ex- 

* This bill was understood at the time to be specially aimed at Mr. Val- 
laadigham. 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 53 

Speaker "Woods, a bill passed exempting the property of 
volunteers from execution for debt during their service. 
Then, as within a few days it became evident that far 
more troops were pressing for acceptance than were 
needed to fill the President's call for thirteen regiments, 
the legislature acceded to the sagacious suggestion of 
the governor that they should be retained for the service 
of the State. The bill authorized the acceptance of ten 
additional regiments, provided five hundred thousand 
dollars for their payment, and a million and a half more 
to be used in case of invasion of the State, or the ap- 
pearance of danger of invasion. Other measures were 
adopted looking to the danger of shipments of arms 
through Ohio to the South ; organizing the militia of the 
State ; providing suitable officers for duty-on the staff of 
the governor; requiring contracts for subsistence of the 
volunteers to be let to the lowest bidder; authorizing 
the appointment of additional general officers. No little 
hostility toward some members of Governor Dennison's 
staff was exhibited, but with the governor himself the 
relations of the legislature were entirely harmonious. 
In concert with him the war legislation was completed ; 
and when, within a month after the first note of alarm 
from "Washington the General Assembly adjourned, the 
State was, for the first time in its history, on a war 
footing. 

" Before the adjournment the acting speaker had re- 
signed to take a command in one of the regiments start- 
ing for Washington; two leading senators had been 
appointed brigadier-generals ; and large numbers of the 
other members had, in one capacity or another, entered 



54 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the service. It was the first of the war legislatures. 
It met the first shock; under the sudden pressure ma- 
tured the first military laws. It labored under difficul- 
ties inseparable from so unexpected a plunge into duties 
so novel. But it may now be safely said that in patriot- 
ism, in zeal and ability, it was second to neither of its 
successors, and that in the exuberance of patriotic senti- 
ment which wiped out party lines and united all in com- 
mon efforts to meet the sudden danger, it surpassed them 
both. 

"Although the country had been greatly excited by 
the acts of secession by the several States, the seizure 
of forts, and the defiance of the general government, 
there still lingered in the minds of the most a trust that 
in some way the matter would be adjusted and blood- 
shed would be avoided. There was much talk of war on 
the part of the young and excitable, but the influential 
men and the masses were slow to believe in the possi- 
bility of war. 

" Before the bombardment of Fort Sumter had ended 
twenty full companies were offered to the Governor of 
Ohio for immediate service. With the news of the sur- 
render and the call of the President for volunteers, the 
excitement became fervidly intense. Militia officers tele- 
graphed their readiness for orders. The President of 
Kenyon College tendered his services in any capacity, and 
began by enlisting in the ranks. The Cleveland Grays, 
the Rover Guards, the Columbus Videttes, the State Fen- 
cibles, the Governor s Guards, the Dayton Light Guards, 
the Guthrie Grays — the best known and best drilled mili- 
tia companies in the State — held meetings, and unani- 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 55 

mously voted to place themselves at the disposal of the 
Government, and telegraphed to Columbus for orders. 
Portsmouth announced a company ready to march. Chil- 
licothe asked if she should send a company that day. 
Circleville telegraphed offering one or more companies, 
announcing that they had two thousand dollars raised 
to equip them. Xenia asked leave to raise a battery 
of artillery and a company of infixntry. Canton sent up 
an officer, begging the acceptance of two companies. 
Lebanon wanted two companies accepted. Springfield 
wanted the same. Lancaster started a company to Colum- 
bus. Cincinnati, Dayton, Cleveland counted their offers 
by the thousand. Steedman, from Toledo, pledged a full 
regiment in ten days. Prominent men, all over the 
State, telegraphed asking what they could do, and plac- 
ing themselves at the disposal of the authorities. The 
instant, all devouring blaze of excited patriotism was as 
amazing as it was unprecedented. Let it not be forgot- 
ten that among the first offers were some from colored 
men promising companies, and that, in obedience to the 
temper of those times, they were refused. 

" But a single day was required to raise the first two 
regiments in answer to the President's call. On the next 
they arrived, in separate companies, at Columbus, on their 
way, as it proved, to Washington. . . On the morning of 
the 18th of April the First and Second Ohio were or- 
ganized from the first companies that had thus hurried to 
Columbus. They were mostly made up of well known 
militia organizations from leading towns and cities. 

" There were no arms, uniforms, equipments, transpor- 



56 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

tation for them. But the Government was importunate. 
' Send them on instantly,' was the order from Washing- 
ton, ' and we will equip them here.' Even among the 
civilians, then for the first time attempting the manage- 
ment of soldiers, there were forebodings concerning the 
policy of starting troops to defend a threatened city with- 
out guns or ammunition ; but with wild cheers from the 
volunteers, and many a ' God bless you' from the on- 
lookers, the trains bearing the unarmed crowd moved 
out of the Columbus depot, long before dawn, on the 
morning of the 19 th of April. But before they started, 
fresh arrivals had more than filled their places in the 
hastily improvised camp in the woods beyond the rail- 
road depot, which, with a happy thought of the first 
advocate for the ' coercion of sovereign states,' Governor 
Deunison had named Camp Jackson. 

" What it now remains to us to tell of the first war 
administration of Ohio, constitutes the highest claim of 
the maligned governor to the regard and gratitude of his 
state and of the country. To a man of his sensitive 
temper and special desire for the good opinion of others, 
the unjust and measureless abuse to which his earnest 
efforts had subjected him were agonizing. But he suf- 
fered no sign to escape him, and with a single-hearted 
devotion, and an ability for which the State had not 
credited him, he proceeded to the measures most neces- 
sary in the crisis. 

" First of all, the loan authorized by the Million War 
Bill was to be placed, for without money the State could 
do nothing. The common council of Cincinnati offered to 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 57 

take a quarter of a million of it, and backed its offer by 
forwarding the money. The State bank, full of confi- 
dence in its old officer, now at the head of the adminis- 
tration, was entirely willing to take the rest; the com- 
mon council of Columbus was willing to take a hundred 
thousand dollars ; and offers speedily came in for smaller 
amounts from other quarters. The governor was anxious, 
however, that a general opportunity should be given to 
patriotic citizens throughout the State. He therefore 
discouraged somewhat the large subscribers, and soon 
had the loan favorably placed. 

" Next after money came the demand for arms. 
For its twenty-three regiments already raised, the State 
of Ohio had only one thousand nine hundred and eighty- 
four muskets and rifles of all calibres, and one hundred 
and fifty sabres. The Governor of Illinois had on 
hands a considerable number, of which Deunison heard. 
He at once resolved to procure them. Senator Garfield 
was at hand, ready and willing for any work to which 
he might be assigned. Duly armed with a requisition 
from the proper authorities, he was dispatched to the 
Illinois capital. He succeeded in securing five thousand 
muskets, and shipped them straightway to Columbus. 
At the sam'e time — for the governor, in the midst of the 
popular abuse, had already begun to display a capacity 
for broad and statesmanlike views — he was instructed to 
lay before the Illinois executive a suggestion as to the 
propriety of uniting the Illinois troops and all others in 
the Mississippi Valley under the Ohio major-general. 
Glad to hear of an officer anywhere who knew anything 
about war, they joyfully consented, and so McClellan's 



58 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

department was, with their full approval, presently ex- 
tended from West Virginia to the Mississippi. 

" Five thousand arms, however, were but a drop in 
the bucket, and accoutrements were almost wholly want- 
ing. The supply in the entire country was quite limited ; 
even in Europe there were not enough immediately ac- 
cessible to meet the sudden demand ; and it was evident 
that the first and most energetic in the market would be 
the first to secure arms for their soldiers. Governor 
Dennison accordingly selected Judge-Advocate-General 
Wolcott of his staff, a gentleman of fine ability and of 
supposed business capacity, to proceed forthwith to New 
York as his agent for the purchase of arms. It was 
under his management that the hasty shipment of tent- 
poles had been made, on which was based one of the 
earliest complaints against the State administration. 
He secured at once, on terms as favorable as could then 
be obtained, about five thousand muskets, with equip- 
ments, knapsacks, canteens, etc., to correspond. Meet- 
ing the agent of the State of Massachusetts, just as he 
was about to sail for England to purchase arms, he com- 
missioned him to purchase there, for Ohio, a hundred 
thousand dollars worth of Enfield rifles. Subsequently 
Mr. Wolcott secured authority from the Ordnance Office 
of the War Department, to purchase directly, on the 
account of the United States, such arms and accoutre- 
ments as were needed for Ohio troops ; and the energy 
and personal supervision which the governor was thus 
able to secure in the transaction of the government busi- 
ness for his State, went largely to aid the rapid arming 
and equipment of the Ohio troops. Before this, however, 



PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE AND STATE SENATOR. 59 

by the aid of another agent, General Wool had been 
prevailed upon to order ten thousand muskets through 
to Columbus, and the first needs were thus supplied." 

To all of Governor Dennison's efforts, Mr. Garfield 
gave a cordial and active support, and rendered the most 
valuable assistance in the task of putting the State in 
condition to do its full duty in the great struggle which 
had now fairly opened. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE OOUJEGE PRESIDENT BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 

Mr. Garfield organizes a Military Company among bis Students — Is made 
Lieutenant-Colonel — Is Promoted to be Colonel of tbe Forty-second 
Obio Infantry — Organization and History of tbe Regiment — A Noble 
Record — Tbe Forty-second ordered to tbe field — Joins General Buell's 
Army in Kentucky — Garfield is placed in Command of a Brigade — State 
of affairs in tbe West — Garfield's first Campaign — An Important Trust 
— Tbe Marcb up tbe Sandy Valley — Tbe First Blow struck — Rout of 
tbe Rebel Cavalry — Colonel Garfield wins a bandsome Victory over 
Humpbrey Marsball at Middle Creek — Fiigbt of Marsball's Forces — 
Garfield sets tbe Ball of Victory in motion — A true estimate of the 
Victory of Middle Creek — A New Dodge — Out of Supplies — The Flood 
in tbe Big Sandy — Garfield forces a Steamboat to ascend tbe River — 
Garfield at tbe Wheel — A Thrilling Incident — Garfield wins another 
Victory — Drives the Rebels from Pound Gap — Is ordered to Louisville 
— Is congratulated by General Buell in General Orders — Value of hia 
Operations. 

As has been stated, it was Mr. Garfield's intention from 
the first to enter the army. He was not able to carry 
this intention into effect until after his return from Illi- 
nois, whither he had been sent to purchase arms, as 
has been related. He now set to work to organize a 
command, which was mainly recruited from among the 
students of Hiram Eclectic Institute. This company was 
promptly offered for service, and constituted the nucleus 
of the Forty-second Ohio Regiment, of which organiza- 
tion Mr. Garfield was appointed lieutenant-colonel by 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 



61 



Governor Denison. Mr. Garfield might have been ap- 
pointed colonel of the regiment had he chosen to press 
the matter, but with characteristic modesty he refrained 
from doing so, and accepted the position offered to him, 
though it was inferior to the rank he was entitled to 
expect. He declared his entire willingness to start low, 
and learn as he advanced. Five weeks were devoted 
to organizing and drilling the regiment, and about the 
time it was complete, and ready for service, Garfield 
was promoted, without any solicitation on his part, to 
the colonelcy. 

It will be interesting to the reader to know the sub- 
sequent history of this gallant regiment. The following 
list of its officers and the account of its brilliant career 
are taken from Whitelaw Reid's " Ohio in the War." 



42d regiment OHIO VOLUNTEER INFANTRY. 



ROSTER, THREE YEARS' SERVICE. 



Colonel .. 

Do. .. 
Lt.-Col... 

Do. .. 
Major . . 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Surgeon. . 

Ass't Sur. 

Do. 

Do. 

Do. 

Do. 
Chaplain. 
Captain . . 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 
LIONEL A. SHELDON 
Lionel A. Sheldon... . 

Don A. Parder 

Don A. Pardee 

Fred. A. Williams 

Wm. H. Williams 

Joel Pomerene 

Joseph W. Harmon.... 

J. N. Miner 

Joseph Kalb 

John W. Driscoll 

H. E. Warner 

Jefferson H. Jones.... 

T. C. Bushnell 

Wm. H. Williams 

Chas. H. Howe 

James H. Riggs 

Chas. P. Jewett 



COM. ISSUED. 



Mar. 
Sept. 
Mar. 
Sept. 
Mar. 
July 
Sept. 
Oct. 
Aug. 
Mar. 



Aug. 
Sept. 



Dec. 14, 
Mar. 28, 
Dec. 14, 
Mar. 28, 
Dec. 14, 
Mar. 28, 
Oct 6, 
Dec. 14, 



Nov. 
Dec. 1 
Mar. 



Appointed Brig.-Gen. Vols. 

Mustered out. 
Promoted to ColoneL 
Must'd out Oct. 26, 7864. 
Promoted to Lieut. -Col. 
Died July 25, 1862. 
Mustered out. 
Resigned July 26, 1863. 
Resigned Nov. 9, 1862. 
Died Dec. 13, I862. 
Resigned Auij. 27, 1864. 
Resigned July 1, 1863. 
Mustered out. 
Resigned April 18, 1S63. 
Resigned Oct. 22. i86». 
Prom'd to Major July 25,1862. 
Resigned May 27, 1863. 
Resigned Dec. 31, 1863. 
Resigned July 11, 1863. 



62 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. ., 

Do. ., 

Do. . 

Do. . 

Do. . 

Do. . 

Do. ., 

Do. . 

Do. ., 

Do. ., 

Do. ., 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. ., 
ist Lieut 

Do. .. 

Do. ., 

Do. ., 

Do. .. 

Do. ., 

Do. ., 

Do. .. 

Do. ,, 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 
ad Lieut. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 

Do. .. 



Frederick A. William 
Andrew Gardner, jr. 

Seth M. Barber 

Horace H. Willard... 

Rollin B. Lynch 

Wm. N.Starr 

Wm. W. Olds 

Horace Potter 

Wm. N. Starr 

Melvin H. Henham.. 
Thomas L. Hutchins. 
Edward B. Campbell.. 



J. S. Ross 

Porter S. Foskett... 
David N. Prince.... 
John B. Helman.... 
George K. Pardee.. 

Alvin J. Over 

Wm. \V. Olds 

Joseph D. Stubbs... 



Sept. 3, 



Oct. 

Nov. 



Wm. N. Starr 

Horace Potter 

George F. Brady 

Herman Suoebedissen. . 

David Scott 

Howards. Bates 

Thomas L. Hutchins... 

Orlancio C. Risdon 

Wm. S. Spencer 

Timothy G. Loomis... 

Marion Knight 

Edwin D. Saunders. . . . 

John R. Helman 

-Melvin H. Benham.... 

Wm. H. Clapp 

Edward B. Campbell.. 

David N. Prince 

John B. Helman 

J. S. Ross 

Porters. Foskett 

Charles B Howk 

Alvin J. Dyer 

George K. Pardee 

Charles P. Goodwin... 

esT. Henry 

Charles R. Henry 

Wm. L.Wilson 

Henry C. JenninsfS 

Albert L. Bowmian.... 

Joseph D. Moody 

Augustus B. Hubbell.. 

John F. Flynn 

Peter Miller 

Henry A. Howard 

Matthew Rodecker.... 

Calvin Pierce 

Horace S. Clark 

Lester K. Lewis | 

John R. Helman Sept. 

Wm. L. Wilson I '' 

Andrew J. Stone " 

Wm. H. Clapp " 

Joseph Lackey I " 

Horace H. W^illard.... Oct. 
Samuel H.Cole , " 



Sept. 20, 

" 28, 

Nov. 2, 



Mar. 14, 

July 25, 

Oct. 22, 

Mar. 3, 
Jan. 38, 
May 27, 



July II, 
Jan. I, 
May 9, 

" 25, 
July 25. 
Aug. 14, 

" '6, 



1863 



June 6, 



July 25, " 

" 25, " 

Oct. 22, " 

Nov. 13, " 
Jan. 28, 1863 

Mar. 3, " 

May 27, " 



Dec. 
July 
Feb. 



Oct. 
May 



July 



COM. ISSUED. 



REMARKS. 



" 6, 

Apr. 14, 

" 14, 

Oct. 6, 
Nov. 17, 
Apr. 22, 1S63 

" 9. 
June 26, 

" 10, 

" 10, 
Jan. 39, 1S64 
May 9, 

" 25, 

July 2?, 

Aug. 30, 1 
Dec. 14, 



Feb. 

Mar. 
Apr. 

May 
June 
Oct. 



Nov. 17, 
Dec. 31, 
Apr. 0,1 

" 22, 
June 26, 



Jan. 28, " 
Aug. 10, " 
Feb. 26, 1864 



26, " 
31, 1863 
9. 1864 



35. 


" 


July 25, 


" 


2S, 


" 


' 35, 


" 


4> 


1861 


Dec. 14, 


.R6t 


•7. 




" 14, 




19. 


" 


" '4, 


*' 


20, 


" 


" 14, 


" 


32, 


" 


'4, 


" 



Promoted to Major. 

Resigned Jan. 28, 1S63. 

Honorably dis'd Mar. 6, 1864. 

Honorablv dis'd Jan. 3, 1864. 

Resigned'March 3, 1863. 

Revoked. 

Killed May i, 1863. 

Nrustered out Sept. 30, 1865. 

Mustered out Sept. 30, 1865. 

Mustered out. 

Mustered out. 

Tranferred to and mustered 
out with 96th O. V. L 

Mustered out Sept. 30, 1864. 

Honorably dis'd Apr. 30, 1864. 

Mustered out. 

Musti red out. 

Resigned Sept. 24, 1864. 

Mustered out. 

Promoted to Captain. 

App. A. Q. M. of vols.; mus- 
tered out Nov. 13. i86j. 
Promoted to Captain. 
Promoted to Captain. 
Resigned March 27, i86a. 
Resijjned April 3, 1862. 
Resigned Jan. 31, 1862. 
Resigned F"eb. 8, 1862. 
Promoted to Captain. 
Transferred to colored reg't. 
Resigned June 11, 1S62. 
Resigned June 5, 1862. 
Resigned June 6, 1S63. 
Promoted to regular army. 
Revoked. 

romoted to Captain. 
App. Cap. A. A. G.May 15, '63 
Promoted to Captain. 
Promoted to Captain. 
Promoted to Captain. 
Promoted to Captain. 
Promoted to Capiain. 
Resigned Oct. 23, 1863, 
Promoted to Captain. 
Promoted to Captain. 
Resigned Aug. 5, 1863. 
Resigned June 29, 1864. 
Mustered out. 
Resigned Sept. 24, 1864. 
Resigned as 2d Lieut. 
Mustered out. 
Mustered out. 
Mustered out. 
Mustered out. 
Mustered out. 
Mustered out Sept. 30, 1864, 
Resigned Sept. 24, 1864. 
Mustered out. 
Mustered out. 
Mustered out. 

Prom, to ist Lt. June 11, i86a. 
Promoted to 1st Lieut. 
Died. 

Promoted to ist Lieut. 
Resigned July 5. 1862. 
Promoted to :st Lieut. 
Resigned May 9, 1863. 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 



63 

















RANK. 






2d Lieut 


Melvin H. Renhatn 


Oct. lo, i86i 


Dec. 14, 1861 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. . 


Edwin C. Leach 


Nov. J, " 


" 14, " 


Resigned June 5. 1862. 


Do. . 


P.-rter H. Foskett 


" 22, " 


" Ml " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. . 


Marion Knif):ht 


" 26, " 


" 14. " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. . 


Wm. L. Steward 


Feb. 28, 1862 


Mar. 20, 1862 


Resigned Nov. 13, 1S62. 


Do. . 


Kdward B. CampbeU.. 


Mar. 30, " 


" 20, " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. . 


Henry C. Jennings 


" 9. " 


Apr. 14, " 


Resigned. 


Do. . 


Charles P. Goodwin... 


" a?. " 


" 14, " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. . 


J S. Ross 


June 6, " 

July s. ;; 


May 7. " 
June 24, 




Do. . 


John F. Robinson 


Transferred to colored reg't. 


Do. . 


Peter Miller 


Sept. 8, " 
Oct. 6, " 


Promoted to ist Lieut, 
Declined. 


Do. . 


Calvin C. Marquis 


Do. . 


Charles E. Henry 


" a5> " 


" 6, " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. . 


Charles B. Howk 


June n, " 


" 6, '• 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. .. 


James T. Henry 




" 6, " 


Promoted to 1st Lieut. 


Do. .. 


James S. Bowlby 


" Si " 


" 6, " 


Resigned Jan. g. 1864. 


Do. .. 


Georjje K. Pardee 


Oct. 22, " 


N0V.17, " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. .. 


Joseph D. Moodv 


July 25, " 


" 17. " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. .. 


Augustus B. Hubbell.. 


Nov. 13, " 


De(?. 24, " 


Promoted to 1st Lieut. 


Do. .. 


Albert L. Bowman 


Jan. 28, 1863 


Apr. 2, 1863 


Promoted to 1st Lieut. 


Do. .. 


Henry Howard 


Mar. 3. " 


" 22, " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. .. 


John Flynn 


Apr. I, " 


July 20, " 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. .. 


Matthew Rodecker.... 


May I, " 


June 10, " 


Promoted to i^t Lieut. 


Do. .. 


Calvin Pierce 


" 28, " 


" lOt '' 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 


Do. .. 


Horace S- Clark 


" 25.1864 


May 25,1864 


Promoted to ist Lieut. 



" The Forty-second Ohio was organized at Camp 
Chase, near Columbus, Ohio. Companies A, B, C, and 
D were mustered into the service September 25, 1861; 
company E, October 30th ; company F, November 12th ; 
and companies G, H, I, and K, November 26th, at which 
time the organization was completed. 

" On the 14th of December orders were received to 
take the field, and on the following day it moved by rail- 
road to Cincinnati, and thence by steamer up the Ohio 
River to Catlettsburg, Kentucky, where it arrived the 
morning of December 17th. The regiment, together 
with the Fourteenth Kentucky Infantry and McLaugh- 
lin's squadron of Ohio cavalry, proceeded to Louisa, Ken- 
tucky, and moved forward to Green Creek. The whole 
command advanced December 31st, and by the night of 
January 7, 1862, encamped within three miles of Paints- 
ville, and the next morning five companies, under com- 



64 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

mand of Lieutenant-Colonel Sheldon, took possession of 
the village. On the evening of the same day Garfield 
took the Forty-second and two companies of the Four- 
teenth Kentucky, and advanced against Marshall's for- 
tified position, about three miles south of the village of 
Paintsville. The infantry reached the works about nine 
o'clock p. M., found them evacuated, and everything valu- 
able either carried away or destroyed ; and after an all- 
night march, returned to Paintsville a little after daylight. 
" About noon on the 9th, Colonel Garfield, with 
eleven hundred infantry from the Forty-second Ohio and 
other regiments, and about six hundred cavalry, started 
in pursuit of Marshall, and about nine o'clock in the even- 
ing the advance was fired upon by Marshall's pickets, 
on the summit of Abbott's Hill. Garfield took posses- 
sion of the hill, bivouacked for the night, and the next 
morning continued the pursuit, overtaking' the enemy 
at the forks of Middle Creek, three miles south-west of 
Prestonburgh. Marshall's force consisted of about three 
thousand five hundred men, infantry and cavalry, with 
three pieces of artillery. Major Pardee, with four hun- 
dred men, was sent across Middle Creek to attack Mar- 
shall directly in front, and Lieutenant-Colonel Monroe 
(Twenty-second Kentucky) was directed to attack on 
Marshall's right flank. The fight at once opened with 
considerable spirit, and Pardee and Monroe became hotly 
engaged with a force four times as large as their own. 
They held their ground with great obstinacy and bravery 
until re-enforcements reached the field, when the enemy 
commenced to fall back. The national forces slept upon 
their arms, and at early dawn a reconnoissance disclosed 



BECOMES A ERIGADIER-GENERAL. DO 

the fact that Marshall had burned his stores and had fled, 
leaving a portion of his dead upon the field. 

" On the 11th the command took possession of Pres- 
tonburgh, Kentucky, and on the 12th returned to Paints- 
ville, and went into camp until the first of February, 
when the force moved by boats up the Big Sandy to 
Pikeville. On the 14th of March the regiment, with 
other troops, took possession of Pound Gap and de- 
stroyed the enemy's camp and stores. The regiment was 
engaged in several other expeditions against the gue- 
rillas. The arduous nature of the campaign, the exceed- 
ingly disagreeable weather, and the want of supplies, 
were disastrous to the health of the troops, and some 
eighty-five of the Forty-second died of disease. 

*' On the 18th of March the regiment received orders 
to proceed to Louisville, where it arrived and went into 
camp on the 29th. The Forty-second was attached to 
Brigadier-General George W. Morgan's command, and 
moved by rail to Lexington, Kentucky, and from there 
marched to Cumberland Ford, with three hundred and 
fourteen men for duty. At Cumberland Ford the regi- 
ment was brigaded with the Sixteenth Ohio, the Four- 
teenth and Twenty-second Kentucky, Colonel John F. 
De Courcey (Sixteenth Ohio) commanding. On the 
15th of May the brigade crossed the Cumberland River 
and encamped at the junction of the roads leading to 
Cumberland Gap and Rogers' Gap. On the 5th of June 
Morgan's entire command took up the line of march to 
cross the mountains into the rear of Cumberland Gap. 
Moving by way of Rogers' Gap into Powell's Valle}', 
the advance was unopposed until it reached Rogers' 

6 



66 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Gap. When a series of skirmishes ensued, nearly all of 
them between the Forty-second and the enemy. At one 
o'clock A. M., June 18th, Morgan moved against a force 
at Big Spring, the Forty-second leading; but the enemy 
fled, and Morgan moved toward Cumberland Gap, reach- 
ing it at five p. m., and found it had been evacuated a 
few hours before. The Forty-second at once moved into 
the Gap, and was the first regiment to plant its flag on 
this stronghold. The regiment camped on the extreme 
right, near Yellow Creek, performing heavy picket duty, 
and being frequently on expeditions. It skirmished at 
Baptist's Gap, at Tazewell, and on the 5th of August en- 
gaged and held back the advance of the army with which 
Kirby Smith invaded Kentucky. 

" On the morning of the 6th a heavy force attacked 
the brigade two miles beyond Tazewell, and it fell back 
leisurely to Cumberland Gap. Company E, of the Forty- 
second, escorted a forage train, and was nearly sur- 
rounded, but by shrewdness and gallantry it saved the 
train and escaped without loss. The Gap was finally 
evacuated, and the forces fell back through Manchester, 
crossed the Kentucky River at Proctor, and crossed the 
Ohio at Greenupsburg. The regiment acted as rear 
guard during the march. When the Forty-second left 
the Gap it numbered seven hundred and fifty men, and 
while on the march there were issued to it two hundred 
and seventy-fi^ve pounds of flour, four hundred pounds of 
bacon, and two rations of fresh pork ; the rest of the food 
consisted of corn, grated down on tin plates and cooked 
upon them. The distance marched was two hundred and 
fifty miles j the weather was very dry, and the men suf- 



BEC05IES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 67 

fered for water. They were without shoes, and their 
clothing was ragged and filthy. The Forty-second lost 
but one man on the retreat from all causes, and it was 
the only regiment that brought through its knapsacj^s 
and blankets. These proved of great service, as the men 
were compelled to camp at Portland, Jackson County, 
Ohio, two weeks before clothing, camp, and garrison equi- 
page could be furnished them. 

"On the 21st of October the regiment proceeded to 
Gallipolis, and thence up the Kanawha to Charlestown, 
Virginia. It returned to the Ohio, November 10th, and 
embarked for Cincinnati, and moved from there down to 
Memphis, encamping near the city on the 28th. While 
at Portland, Ohio, the regiment received one hundred 
and three recruits, and at Memphis it received sixty-five 
more. It had from time to time obtained a few, so that 
the whole number reached two hundred or more, and the 
regiment could turn out on parade nearly nine hundred 
men. General Morgan's division was reorganized, and 
was denominated the Ninth Division, Thirteenth Army 
Corps. 

" On the 20th of December, the Forty-second, with 
other troops, under General W. T. Sherman, embarked 
at Memphis, and proceeding down the river, landed 
at Johnston's plantation on the Yazoo. The Forty- 
second led the advance against the defenses of Vicks- 
burg on the 27th of December, and skirmished with the 
enemy until dark. The next morning the regiment re- 
sumed the attack against the enemy thrown out beyond 
their works, and protected in front by timber and lagoon. 
The regiment continued to advance, without driving the 



68 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

enemy, until Colonel Pardee ordered a charge, which was 
made with great spirit, and resulted in gaining possession 
of the woods and driving the rebels into their works. 
About nine o'clock a. m. on the 29th, a charge was made, 
the Forty-second being on the extreme right of the 
assaulting column. The storm of shot and shell was ter- 
rific, but the regiment maintained its organization, and 
came off the field in good order. During the remainder 
of the engagement the regiment held its position in line. 
The army finally retired, re-embarked, and moved to 
Milliken's Bend. 

" On the 4th of January, 1863, the fleet steamed up 
the river to White River, and up it through a "cut-oif" 
into the Arkansas, and up it to Arkansas Post, where the 
troops disembarked and invested Fort Hindman, De 
Courcey's brigade being held in reserve. After four 
hours of severe cannonading the infantry advanced, and, 
several unsuccessful charges having been made, De Cour- 
cey's brigade was ordered to join Sheldon's brigade in 
assaulting Fort Hindman. The Forty-second led the 
advance, and, soon after getting fairly under fire, the 
enemy surrendered. Seven thousand prisoners, all the 
guns and small arms, and a large quantity of stores were 
captured. 

" In a few days the troops re-embarked, and on the 
24 th of January landed at Young's Point. Here the 
Forty-second was allotted its proportion of the work on 
the canal, and was allowed four days to perform it ; but, 
so vigorous was the regiment in the discharge of its duties, 
that it accomplished its work in seventeen hours. On the 
loth of March the division moved to Milliken's Bend, 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 69 

where it was soon joined bj the remainder of the corps. 
Here supplies were received, and four weeks were spent 
in drilling and fitting for the coming campaign. 

" The Ninth Division took the advance in the move- 
ment toward the rear of Vicksburg. . The troops moved 
to Richmond, Madison Parish, Louisiana, and embarked 
about thirtj miles below Vicksburg, on transports which 
had run the batteries, and moved down to Grand Gulf. 
Here they debarked, crossed the point, again took trans- 
ports, moved down to Bruinsburg, and debarked on the 
Mississippi side of the river. The division advanced 
against Port Gibson, and at twelve o'clock at night had 
a slight engagement with the enemy. The whole corps 
moved up and bivouacked near Magnolia Church. At 
daybreak the troops were under arms and advancing. 
The Ninth Division, taking the left of the line, speedily 
engaged the enemy, and continued in action until four 
o'clock p. M. The Forty-second was placed under a 
heavy fire of artillery at seven o'clock a. m., and con- 
tiued there until nine o'clock a. m., when it was advanced 
to the centre of the division line and ordered to charge. 
The order was obeyed with spirit and courage, but, meet- 
ing with unexpected obstacles, the division commander 
ordered it to retire. It continued skirmishing until 
twelve o'clock, when it joined the Sixteenth Ohio and 
Twenty-second Kentucky, and charged a strong position 
held by the rebels, but, after a brave effort, failed to 
dislodge them, and was again ordered to retire. It was 
moved to the right, and about three o'clock p. m. made a 
third charge, and in conjunction with the Forty-ninth 
Indiana and One Hundred and Fourteenth Ohio, carried 



70 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the enemy's position. In this engagement the regiment 
sustained a heavier loss than any other one in the corps. 

" On the 2d of May the corps advanced and took 
possession of Port Gibson, and moved on by way of 
Champion Hills and Big Black Bridge to the rear of 
Vicksburg. The regiment was engaged both at Cham- 
pion Hills and Big Black, but the loss was comparatively 
slight. It participated in the charges on the works at 
Vicksburg on the 19th and 22d of May, the Ninth Divis- 
ion holding an advanced position in the Thirteenth Corps. 
In these assaults the regiment lost heavily, especially on 
the 22d. On the 10th of June the Forty-second was 
moved toward the right in support of some batteries, 
where it remained until June 27th, when it moved to Big 
Black Bridge. After the surrender of Vicksburg the 
regiment marched to Jackson and participated in the 
reduction of that place, and then returned to Vicksburg, 
where it remained until ordered to the Department of 
the Gulf. 

" The regiment arrived at Carrollton, near New Or- 
leans, August 15th, and on the 6th of September started 
on the Western Louisiana campaign. At Brashear city 
the Ninth and Twelfth Divisions of the Thirteenth Corps 
were consolidated, and Brigadier-General Lawler was 
assigned to the command of the brigade. The brigade 
moved up to Vermilion Bayou, and from there to Ope- 
lousas, where it remained a few days, and returned with 
the corps to Berwick Bay. On the 18th of November 
the brigade crossed to Brashear city, with the intention 
of*going into Texas, but the following night it was ordered 
to Thibodeaux, and proceeded thence by way of Donald- 



BECX)MES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 71 

sonville to Plaquemine, arriving November 21st. The 
regiment remained here during the winter, and on the 
24th of March, 1864, moved to Baton Rouge, and was 
detailed as provost-guard for the city. On the 1st of 
May the Forty-second, with other troops, marched on an 
expedition toward Clinton, Louisiana, engaged an equal 
force of the enemy for seven hours, and at last drove the 
rebels five miles through canebrakes and over the Comite 
River. On this expedition the infantry marched fifty- 
four miles in eighteen hours. The regiment embarked on 
boats, May 16th, and reported to General Canby at the 
mouth of Red River, and moved up to Simmsport, on 
the Atchafalaya River, where a provisional brigade was 
formed, comprising the Seventh Kentucky, Twenty- 
second and Twenty-third Iowa, Thirty-seventh Illinois, 
and Forty-second Ohio, Colonel Sheldon commanding. 
Meeting General Banks' army here, the regiment 
marched to Morganza, Louisiana, with it. The regiment 
was on several expeditions and in one slight skirmish. 
Here the Forty-second was attached to the First Brigade, 
Third Division, Nineteenth Corps. Here, also, a test- 
drill was held in the Nineteenth Corps, and company E 
of the Forty-second Ohio, won the first prize. 

" The brigade moved up the Mississippi, July 15th, 
and landed at the mouth of White River. While lying 
here a detachment of the regiment crossed into Mississippi, 
marched fifteen miles, captured two small parties of rebels, 
and returned within ten hours. The brigade moved up 
to St. Charles, on White River, and after working ten 
days on the fortifications, made an expedition of some 
sixty miles into the country. On the 6th of August the 



72 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

brigade returned to Morganza, and on the 6th of Septem- 
ber moved to the mouth of White Ptiver again. Com- 
panies A, B, C, and D were ordered to Camp Chase, 
Ohio, September 15th, and were mustered out September 
30th. The remaining six companies were ordered to 
Duvall's Bluff, Arkansas. Companies E and F were 
mustered out November 25th, and the other four com- 
panies were mustered out December 2, 1864. One 
hundred and one men remained, whose term of service 
had not expired, and they were organized into a com- 
pany and assigned to the Ninety-sixth Ohio. 

" The regiment bears upon its banners the names of 
eleven battles, in which it lost one officer and twenty 
men killed, and eighteen officers and three hundred and 
twenty-five men wounded." 

On the 14th of December the Forty-second Ohio re- 
ceived orders to take the field. The regiment was or- 
dered to Catlettsburg, Kentucky, and Colonel Garfield 
was directed to report in person to General Buell, of 
whose army his command was to form a part. lie did so 
promptly, and was cordially received by General Buell, 
who, though holding opinions diametrically opposed to 
those of Colonel Garfield, was a true soldier, and at once 
recognized that his young subordinate was made of the 
right kind of material. 

On the 17th of December, Garfield was assigned by 
General Buell to the command of the Seventeenth Bri- 
gade, which consisted of the Fortieth and Forty-second 
Ohio, the Fourteenth and Twenty-second Kentucky In- 
fantry, six companies of the First Kentucky Cavalry, 
and two companies of McLaughlin's Ohio Cavalry. 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 73 

The first duty to which Colonel Garfield was ordered, 
was the task of driving Humphrey Marshall's confederate 
forces out of the Sandy Valley in Eastern Kentucky. Up 
to this time the interest of the war had been confined 
mainly to the country east of the Alleghanies, and but 
little had been attempted in the Ohio Valley. The prin- 
cipal engagement, that of Belmont, had been unsuccess- 
ful, and even in the east the disasters at Bull Run and 
Ball's Bluff had spread a gloom over the loyal States. 
General Buell was collecting a strong force in Kentucky, 
for the purpose of advancing upon the Confederate posi- 
tion at Bowling Green, but his movements were ham- 
pered by the presence of two co-operating forces skilfully 
planted on their striking distance of his flank. These 
were the command of General ZoUicofTer, who was mov- 
ing from Cumberland Gap toward Mill Spring, and the 
forces of General Humphrey Marshall, who was leisurely 
moving down the Sandy Valley and threatening to over- 
run Eastern Kentucky. These forces were a serious 
menace to General Buell, and until they could be driven 
back an advance upon Bowling Green would be hazard- 
ous in the extreme, if not impossible. Brigadier-General 
George H. Thomas was ordered to drive ZoUicofTer back, 
and Colonel Garfield was directed to force Marshall out 
of Kentucky. The fjite of the whole campaign depended 
upon the success of these movements. 

Some persons were inclined to think that the choice 
of Garfield for this delicate and important service was 
rash. He had never seen a gun fired in battle, or exer- 
cised the command of troops save on parade, or in camp, 
or on the march. But he now found himself at the head 



74 JAMES A. GARFIELD. " 

of four regiments of infantry and eight companies of cav- 
alry, and was sent upon a service the success or failure of 
which would aid or defeat the entire plan of campaign on 
the part of General Buell. Opposed to him was one of 
the most trusted and accomplished of the Southern com- 
manders, and a veteran who had won high distinction as 
the colonel of the heroic Kentucky regiment at Buena 
Vista, in the war with Mexico. He had under him 
nearly five thousand men, with artillery and cavalry, and 
was strongly posted at the village of Paintsville, sixty 
miles up the Sandy Valley. Marshall was ordered by 
the Confederate Government to advance to Lexington, 
unite there with ZoUicoffer, and establish the authority 
of the Confederacy over Kentucky. It did indeed seem 
that Garfield was overmatched ; but Buell had measured 
his man, and was satisfied that if success could be won, 
the young Ohio colonel would win it ; and he was content 
to await the issue. 

Upon receipt of his orders, Colonel Garfield at once 
joined the bulk of his brigade which was stationed at the 
mouth of the Big Sandy River. He at once broke up 
camp, and advanced up the valley, sending orders to the 
rest of his forces at Paris, to move across the country 
and join him a short distance below Paintsville. The 
force with which he began the movement up the valley 
was about twenty-two hundred strong. 

Marshall was promptly informed of Garfield's move- 
ments by the Southern sympathizers of the valley. He 
left a small force of cavalry to hold his old position, to 
act as an escort and protect his trains, and with the rest 
of his forces fell back to a stronger position near Preston- 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 75 

burgh, where he awaited attack. On the 7th of January, 
1862, while pressing his advance up the valley. Colonel 
Garfield was informed of the position of Marshall's cav- 
alry, and at onee sent a detachment of his own mounted 
men to attack it, while with the rest of his command he 
pushed on to make a reconnoissance in force of the posi- 
tion he still "supposed Marshall's main body to occupy. 
To his surprise he found the Confederate forces had 
retreated. Being anxious to capture the cavalry left 
behind by Marshall, he sent orders to the officer com- 
manding the troops he had dispatched to attack it, direct- 
ing him not to bring on the action until the main body 
had seized the Confederate line of retreat. The courier 
who bore this order was detained, and the Union cavalry 
in the meantime attacked the Confederate cavalry and 
drove it back in confusion after a short but sharp en- 
counter. In the meantime Garfield pushed on with 
speed towards the road by which the Confederates must 
retreat. Upon reaching it, he found it strewn with over- 
coats, blankets, arms, and cavalry equipments, which 
showed that the Union attack had been successfully 
made, and that the Confederates had already retreated 
over the road, and in great confusion. He at once threw 
forward the cavalry with him in hot pursuit, and con- 
tinued the chase until the outposts of Marshall's new 
position were reached. A brief reconnoissance was 
made, and then Colonel Garfield drew back his whole 
force, and encamped at Paintsville. The next morning 
he was joined by the detachment that had marched over- 
land from Paris. This brought his whole force to about 
three thousand four hundred men, but he was without 



76 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

artillery. The troops remained in camp throughout the 
8th, waiting for rations, which were obtained with the 
greatest difficulty. 

On the 9th of January, Colonel Garfield advanced 
upon Marshall's new position near Prestonburgh. He was 
obliged to leave about one thousand of his men at Paints- 
ville to secure rations for them, but with the rest of his 
force he made a vigorous attempt to develop the enemy's 
position, and by nightfall had driven in the Southern 
pickets and completed his dispositions for an attack. He 
now ordered up the rest of his command from Paintsville, 
and prepared to open the attack the next morning. 
That night the troops bivouacked on their arms, and in 
the midst of a heavy rain. 

By four o'clock on the morning of January 10, 1862, 
the Union forces were in motion. Marshall was believed 
to be stationed on Abbott's Creek. Garfield's plan, there- 
fore, was to get over upon Middle Creek, and so plant 
himself in the enemy's rear. But in fact, Marshall's 
force was upon the heights of Middle Creek itself, only 
two miles west of Prestonburgh. So, when Garfield, 
advancing cautiously westward up the Creek, had con- 
sumed some hours in these movements, he came upon a 
semicircular hill, scarcely one thousand yards in front 
of which was Marshall's position, between the forks of 
the Creek. The expected re-enforcements from Paints- 
ville had not arrived ; and conscious of his comparative 
weakness, Colonel Garfield determined first to develop 
the enemy's position more carefully. A small body of 
picked men sent dashing up the road, drew a fire from 
both the head of the gorge through which the road led, 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 77 

and from the heights on its left. Two columns were 
then moved forward, one on either side of the creek, and 
the rebels speedily opened upon them with musketry 
and artillery. The fight became somewhat severe at 
times, but was, on the whole, desultory. Garfield re-en- 
forced both his columns, but the action soon developed 
itself mainly on the left, where Marshall speedily con- 
centrated his whole force. Meantime Garfield's reserve 
was now also under fire from the commanding position 
held by the enemy's artillery. He was entirely without 
artillery to reply ; but the men stationed themselves be- 
hind trees and rocks, and kept up a brisk though irregu- 
lar fusillade. 

"At last, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the re- 
enforcements from Paintsville arrived. As we now know, 
these still left Marshall's strength superior to his young 
assailant, but the troops looked upon their opportune ar- 
rival as settling the contest. Unbounded enthusiasm was 
aroused, and the approaching column was received with 
prolonged cheering. Garfield now promptly formed his 
whole reserve for attacking the enemy's right, and carry- 
ing his guns. The troops were moving rapidly up in the 
fast gathering darkness, when Marshall hastily abandoned 
his position, fired his camp equipages and stores, and be- 
gan a retreat that was not ended until he had reached 
Abingdon, Virginia. Night checked the pursuit. Next 
day it was continued for some distance, and some pris- 
oners were taken, but a farther advance in that direction 
was quite impossible without more transportation, and in- 
deed would have been foreign to the purpose for which 
General Buell had ordered the expedition." 



78 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

This brilliant success was won by the Union forces 
with the loss of but one man killed and seven wounded. 
Two of these were members of Colonel Garfield's own 
regiment, and died of their wounds shortly after the 
action. Thus was the first campaign of the young Ohio 
colonel a handsome success. Speaking of the battle of 
Middle Creek, sometime afterwards when he had learned 
more of war, Garfield modestly said, "It was a very 
rash and imprudent affair on my part. If I had been 
an officer of more experience, I probably should not have 
made the attack. As it was, having gone into the army 
with the notion that fighting was our business, I did not 
know any better." Captain F. H. Manton, in his his- 
tory of the Forty-second Ohio Regiment, furnishes us 
with a juster view of this battle than the modesty of the 
Union commander allowed him to indulge in. He says : 

" The battle of Middle Creek, skirmish though it may 
be considered in comparison with later contests, was the 
first substantial victory won for the Union cause. At 
Big Bethel, Bull Run, in Missouri, and at various points 
at which the Union and Confederate forces had come in 
contact, the latter had been uniformly victorious. The 
people of the North, giving freely of their men and their 
substance in response to each successive call of the Gov- 
ernment had long and anxiously watched and waited for 
a little gleam of victory to show that Northern valor was 
a match for Southern impetuosity in the field. They 
had waited in vain since the disaster at Bull Run during 
the previous summer, and hope had almost yielded to 
despair. The story of Garfield's success at Middle Creek 
came, therefore, like a benediction to the Union cause. 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 79 

Though won at trifling cost it was decisive so far as con- 
cerned the purposes of that immediate campaign. Mar- 
shall's force was driven from Kentucky and made no fur- 
ther attempt to occupy the Sandy Valley. The impor- 
tant victories at Mill Spring, Forts Donelson and Henry, 
and the repulse at Shiloh followed. The victory at 
Middle Creek proved the first wave of a returning tide." 

" But though they had defeated the enemy, a very 
serious peril threatened the Union forces. An unusually 
violent storm broke out. The mountain gorges were all 
flooded, and the Sandy rose to such a height that steam- 
boatmen pronounced it impossible to ascend the stream 
with supplies. The troops were almost out of rations 
and the rough mountainous country was incapable of sup- 
porting them. Colonel Garfield had gone down the river 
to its mouth. He ordered the " Sandy Valley," a small 
steamer, which had been in the quartermaster's service, 
to take on a load of supplies and start up. The cap- 
tain declared it was impossible, Efforts were made to 
get other vessels, but without success. 

" Finally, Colonel Garfield ordered the captain and 
crew on board, stationed a competent army officer on 
deck to see that the captain did his duty, and himself 
took the wheel. The captain protested that no boat 
could possibly stem the raging current, but Garfield 
turned her head up the stream and began the perilous 
trip. The water in the usually shallow river was sixty 
feet deep, and the tree-tops along the banks were almost 
submerged. The little vessel trembled from stem to stern 
at every motion of the engines ; the waters whirled her 
about as if she were a skiff; and the utmost speed that 



80 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

steam could give her was three miles an hour. When 
night fell the captain of the boat begged permission to 
tie up. To attempt ascending that flood in the dark he 
declared was madness. But Colonel Garfield kept his 
place at the wheel. Finally, in one of the sudden bends 
of the river, they drove, with a full head of steam, into 
the quicksand of the bank. Every effort to back off was 
in vain. Mattocks were procured and excavations were 
made around the imbedded bow. Still she stuck. Gar- 
field at last ordered a boat to be lowered to take a line 
across to the opposite bank. The crew protested against 
venturing out in the fl -^d. The colonel leaped into the 
boat himself and steered it over. The force of the cur- 
rent carried them far below the point they sought to 
reach; but they finally succeeded in making fast to a 
tree and rigging a windlass with rails sufficiently power- 
ful to draw the vessel off and get her once more afloat. 

" It was on Saturday that the boat left the mouth of 
the Sandy. All night, all day Sunday, and all through 
Sunday night they kept up their struggle with the cur- 
rent, Garfield leaving the wheel only eight hours out of 
the whole time, and that during the day. By nine o'clock 
Monday morning they reached the camp, and were re- 
ceived with tumultuous cheering. Garfield himself could 
scarcely escape being borne to headquarters on the shoul- 
ders of the delighted men." 

The months of January, February, and March, 1862, 
were comparatively uneventful. Colonel Garfield con- 
tinued to hold the Sandy Valley with his forces. A 
number of encounters took place between his troops and 
the Confederate guerilla bands. The Union forces were 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 81 

generally successful, and the Confederates were gradually 
driven from the State. 

In spite of these successes, however, Humphrey Mar- 
shall managed to maintain a post of observation in the 
rugged pass through the mountains known as Pound Gap 
situated just on the border between Virginia and Ken- 
tucky. This post was held by a force of about five hun- 
dred men. Garfield determined to break it up, and ac- 
cordingly set out on the 14th of March with about five 
hundred infantry and two hundred cavalry, to carry this 
purpose into effect. He had to march forty miles over 
a road that was scarcely passable for a single horseman, 
but he pushed on with energy, and by the evening of 
the 15th he reached the foot of the mountain two miles 
north of the Gap. On the morning of the 16th he moved 
forward to attack the post, sending his cavalry directly 
up the road through the Gap, to divert the enemy's at. 
tention from his real attack, while with the infantry he 
moved by an unfrequented footpath up the side of the 
mountain, his march being concealed by a heavy snow- 
storm. The movements of the cavalry so completely ab- 
sorbed the enemy's attention that Garfield Avas enabled 
to advance his infantry to a point within a quarter of a 
mile of the Southern position without being perceived. 
Having gained this point in safety he hurled his men like 
a thunderbolt upon the enemy, who, unsuspicious of an 
attack from that quarter were taken by surprise and were 
soon thrown into confusion by it. A few volleys were 
exchanged, and then the Confederates retreated in dis- 
order down the mountain side, followed by the cavalry, 
who pursued them for several miles into Virginia. The 



82 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

inftmtry at once occupied the captured position and 
secured a considerable quantity of stores. The entire 
Union force passed the night in the comfortable log huts 
of the enemy. The next morning all the structures con- 
nected with the post were set on fire, together with the 
stores that Colonel Garfield was unable to carry away, 
and the Union forces returned to their camp in the Sandy 
Valley, well satisfied with the success they had won. 

On the 23d of March, Garfield received orders from 
Buell to leave a small force at Piketon and hasten with 
the rest of his command to Louisville. He was now to 
take part in the more important operations of the war. 

The Kentucky campaign of Colonel Garfield was en- 
tirely satisfactory to his official superiors and to the 
country at large. General Buell was so well pleased 
with the victory of Middle Creek, that he issued a thrill- 
ing congratulatory order, in which he expressed his ap- 
preciation of the skill and good generalship displayed by 
Garfield, in terms of unusual warmth. The full text of 
the order was as follows : 

"Headquarters, Department of the Ohio, 

Louisville, Kentucky, Jan., 20, 1862. 

" General Orders, No. 40. 

" The general commanding takes occasion to thank 
General Garfield and his troops for their successful cam- 
paign against the rebel force under General Marshall on 
the Big Sandy, and their gallant conduct in battle. 
They have overcome formidable difficulties in the char- 
acter of the country, the condition of the roads, and the 
inclemency of the season ; and, without artillery, have 



BECOMES A BRIGADIER-GEx\ERAL. 83 

in several engagements, terminating in the battle on 
Middle Creek, on the 10th instant, driven the enemy 
from his intrenched positions and forced him back info 
the mountains with the loss of a large amount of ba-gage 
and stores, and many of his men killed or captured. 

'' These services have called into action the highest 
qualities of a soldier— fortitude, perseverance, courage." 
" For his services in this campaign Colonel Garfield 
was promoted by the President to the grade of brigadier- 
general of volunteers, his commission dating from the 
10th of January, 1862, the day of the battle of Middle 
Creek. The promotion gave great satisfaction to both 
the people of Ohio and the troops in the field, and all 
felt that a brilliant future was open to the young general. 
" Later criticism," says Mr. Reid, " will confirm the 
general verdict then passed on the Sandy Valley cam- 
paign. It was the first of the series of brilliant suc- 
cesses that made the spring of 1862 so memorable. Mill 
Springs, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Nashville, Island 
No. 10, Memphis, followed in quick succession; but it 
was Garfield's honor that he opened this season of vic- 
tories. His plans, as we have seen, were based on 
sound military principles; the energy which he threw 
into their execution was thoroughly admirable, and his 
management of the raw volunteers was such that they 
acquired the fullest confidence in their commander, and 
endured the hardships of the campaign with a fortitude 
not often shown in the first field service of new troops. 
But the operations were on a small scale, and their chief 
significance lay in the capacity they developed rather 
than in their intrinsic importance." 



CHAPTER IV. 

FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 

General Garfield given a Brigade in the Army of the Cumberland— Joins 
Buell on the march — Battle of Pittsburgh Landing — General Garfield's 
share in this fight— Takes part in the Pursuit— The Siege of Corinth— 
Garfield's Brigade one of the first to enter the town— Is ordered to re- 
pair the Memphis and Charleston Railroad— Successful performance of 
this duty— Garfield at Huntsville— Detailed for Court-martial duty— 
A severe illness— Ordered to Cumberland Gap — Placed on the Fitz-John 
Porter Court-martial- Ordered to South Carolina— Battle of Stone 
River— Garfield is appointed Chief of Staff to General Rosecrans— His 
duties and services in this position — General Rosecrans' quarrels with 
the War Department — Garfield endeavors to harmonize these difficulties 
— Rosecrans' delay at Murfreesboro— Reasons for it— Garfield's views 
respecting it — A stinging letter from Rosecrans to Halleck — Garfield's 
ad<vice respecting the Reorganization of the Army — It is disregarded — 
He urges Rosecrans to advance — A Model Military Report— The Army 
moves off— The Tullahoma Campaign — A brilliant success — It was 
really due to Garfield— Advance upon Chattanooga — Retreat of Bragg — 
Battle of Chickamauga— Garfield's share in it — He is promoted to be 
MajoF-General of Volunteers for his conduct at Chickamauga. 

Upon reaching Louisville, General Gai-field found that the 
Army of the Ohio was on its way to join General Grant 
at Pittsburgh Landing, on the Tennessee River, and had 
already moved beyond Nashville. He set out quickly 
after it, and joined it about thirty miles south of Colum- 
bia. Upon reporting to General Buell he was ordered to 
tjike command of the Twentieth brigade, which at that 
time formed a part of General Thomas J. Wood's division. 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 85 

The latter part of the march was made with all speed, 
for news had come that the Confederates had attacked 
General Grant's army at Pittsburgh Landing, and were 
pressing it very hard. Late in the afternoon of the first 
day of the battle, the advanced forces of General Buell 
reached the battle-field. The division to which Garfield 
was attached arrived about noon on the second day, 
April 7th, and was at once thrown forward into the 
action. Garfield's brigade took part in the closing 
scenes of the battle, and acquitted itself with distinction, 
though the Union victory was already decided when it 
arrived upon the scene. Concerning the part played by 
Buell's troops in this great battle the brilliant author of 
" Ohio in the War " says : 

" We need not repeat the sad story of the first day's 
disaster, which, in other pages, has been fully traced. 
Before Nelson could get up with his advance division. 
Grant was sending back earnestly for assistance, and 
representing the force with which he was engaged at a 
hundred thousand. 

" The advance of Nelson's division, after waiting for 
some time opposite the landing for means of crossing, 
reached the field just as the rebels were making their 
last advance. It rapidly took post under General Buell's 
direction, and opened with musketry and artillery. No 
more ground was yielded, and the troops encamped in 
line of battle. 

" There was no conference between the command- 
ers. One of Grant's subordinates furnished Buell with 
a rough map of the ground, and there was a common 
understanding that operations must be renewed at day- 



86 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

light. Through the night Crittenden's division of Buell's 
army arrived, and was moved out upon Nelson's right. 
McCook's, which arrived in time to get into action only 
a little later than the others, was used for further pro- 
longation to the right. 

" And now was seen, even more conspicuously than 
in the steady marching, the results of the fine discipline 
which Buell had been enforcing. At daybreak Nelson, 
moving in line of battle, drove in the enemy's pickets and 
engaged his artillery. The other divisions were then 
brought up, and with varying fortune the whole line ad- 
vanced. It stretched over three-fourths of the battle- 
field. The remainder was left to the arriving fragments 
of Grant's army. There was no straggling from that 
line ; no confused breaking and fleeing to the rear on the 
first onset of the enemy. Many of the troops had never 
before been under fire ; and they were commanded by a 
man who, before that eventful day, had never handled so 
large a force as a single regiment in actioif. But he was 
a soldier, and he was manoeuvring men of whom he had 
made soldiers. An effort was made to turn his right 
flank — he promptly threw in McCook's division to check 
it. An effort was made to turn his left flank — he^parried 
it, then brought up the reserves at that point, hurled the 
whole force against Beauregard's right, drove it, and so 
flanked the rest of the rebel line, which speedily fell 
back. Then again the whole line advanced. 

" At no time did the force thus wielded lose its cohe- 
sion, but there were moments when the prospect looked 
gloomy. A battery was driven, with its supports, and a 
caisson was lost. Another battery was driven, and sev- 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 87 

eral guns were lost. But the line speedily rallied, and 
they were recaptured. Then again it pressed forward. 
For hours still the struggle continued through the alter- 
nate strips of woodland and little intervals of farm-land, 
on which, the day before, Grant's army had retreated. 
McCook's division had the honor of ending the struggle, 
and its last, charge carried it into the camps from which 
Sherman had been driven. The disaster was retrieved — 
at a cost to Buell's army of two thousand one hundred 
and sixty-seven killed, wounded, and missing. An equal 
or greater loss had been inflicted, and twenty pieces of 
rebel artillery had been captured." 

On the 8th of April, Garfield moved forward with 
Sherman's advance in the pursuit of the retreating enemy, 
and had a sharp encounter with the Confederate rear- 
guard a few miles beyond the battle-field. 

The Confederates retreated to their strong position at 
Corinth. The Union army advanced to that point, and 
General Halleck assumed the command of all the forces. 
The Confederate position was formally invested, and a 
regular siege of the place was begun. General Garfield's 
brigade bore its full share in the tiresome and laborious 
operations of the siege. On the 30th of May the Confed- 
erates completed the evacuation of Corinth, which they 
had begun some weeks ago, and retired in safety to a 
position farther south, leaving to General Halleck, as the 
fruits of his siege operations, their deserted works and 
about four hundred prisoners. The Union forces occupied 
Corinth the next day, Garfield's brigade being among the 
first to enter the abandoned stronghold. 

Corinth having fallen, General Buell was ordered by 



88 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

General Halleck to advance through North Alabama to 
Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the purpose of liberating 
East Tennessee. General Buell urged a more northerly 
route, leading through Middle Tennessee and McMinn- 
ville, but having for its end the occupation of the same 
points, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Dalton. Halleck 
accepted this change, but on the 12th of June withdrew 
his consent to it, and ordered Buell to advance along the 
line of the Memphis and Charleston railway, with Corinth 
as a second base. He was directed to repair the railroad 
as he advanced. To General Garfield's brigade. General 
Buell assigned the task of repairing the railroad eastward 
from Corinth to Decatur, an arduous task, and one which 
subsequently proved of no practical benefit during the 
campaign which followed. Garfield executed his orders 
as promptly as was possible. Crossing the Tennessee 
River at Decatur, he advanced to Huntsville, Alabama, 
where he remained during the rest of the campaign. 

While at Huntsville, General Garfield was made presi- 
dent of a court-martial appointed for the trial of Colonel 
Turchin, whose command had committed unpardonable 
excesses in its reoccupation of Athens, Alabama. The 
abiUty which he displayed in the trial of this case, which 
resulted in the dismissal of Colonel Turchin from the 
army, attracted the attention of his superiors, and caused 
him to be detailed on several other courts-martial. 

The malarious character of the country in which he 
was serving revived the old tendency to fever and ague 
which General Garfield had contracted when a boy boat- 
man on the Ohio canal, and he was now seized with an 
attack of chills and fever so violent that he was sent 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 89 

home on sick leave about the first of August, 1862. 
About the same time orders were received from Wash- 
ington, tendering him a new and more important com- 
mand. The Secretary of War had formed a high esti- 
mate of General Garfield's military ability, an opinion 
which he continued to entertain throughout the war, and 
he now ordered General Garfield to repair at once to 
Cumberland Gap, and relieve General George W. Morgan 
of the command of the Union forces at that point. When 
these orders reached General Garfield he was confined 
to his bed, and was too ill to execute them. About a 
month later the Secretary of War ordered him to report 
to him in person, at Washington, as soon as the state of 
his health would permit him to return to duty. 

Reaching Washington, he found that he had been ap- 
pointed by the Secretary of War one of the first members 
of the court-martial summoned for the trial of General 
Fitz-John Porter on charges preferred against him by 
General Pope. This selection was caused by the confi- 
dence which the Government had come to repose in 
General Garfield's knowledge of the law, his excellent 
judgment and impartiality, as well as his sterling devo- 
tion to the Union. He attended the sessions of the court 
throughout the trial with most earnest attention, and 
gave his vote for the verdict by which General Porter 
was dismissed from the army and rendered incapable of 
holding any position of profit or trust under the Govern- 
ment of the United States. He has always maintained 
the justice of this sentence, and during his subsequent 
service in Congress has firmly opposed any and all at- 
tempts to reopen the matter or to set aside the sentence 



90 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

of the court-martial. He declared that the evidence 
before the court showed beyond question that Porter 
had wilfully permitted the defeat of Pope's army at the 
second battle of Bull Run, and that no less punishment 
than absolute dismissal from the service would be at all 
adequate to his offense. The duties of the court-martial 
detained General Garfield in Washington during almost 
the whole of the autumn of 1862. The president of the 
court was Major-General David Hunter, who was to take 
command in South Carolina upon the adjournment of 
the court-martial. He conceived a warm friendship for 
Garfield, which was returned, and was drawn to him es- 
pecially by the strong antislavery views of the latter, 
which had been greatly strengthened by his experience 
during the war. General Hunter applied for and ob- 
tained an order from the War Department detailing Gen- 
eral Garfield for service with him in South Carolina. 
This appointment was very gratifying to General Gar- 
field, and he was in the midst of his preparations to pro- 
ceed to Port Royal, when the order was revoked, and he 
was directed to proceed to a new field of duty. In the 
last days of December, 1862, the western army, in which 
General Garfield had won his first distinction, fought the 
terrible battle of Stone River, or Murfreesboro, winning a 
memorable victory. Among the killed was the lamented 
General Garesche, chief of staff to General Rosecrans, 
the commander of the army. The post thus made va- 
cant was one of the greatest importance, and as General 
Garesche had been regarded as one of the most brilliant 
officers in the service, it was feltothat his successor must 
be a man who would not suffer upon comparison with 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 91 

him. The Secretary of War determined to appoint Gen 
ernl Garfield to the vacancy ; and so, early in January, 
1863, his South Carolina appointment was revoked, and 
he was ordered to proceed to Tennessee and join General 
Rosecrans. 

" The chief of staff should bear the same relation to 
his general that a minister of state does to his sovereign. 
What this last relation is the most brilliant of recent 
historians shall tell us : ' The difference between a ser- 
vant and a minister of state lies in this, that the servant 
obeys the orders given him without troubling himself 
concerning the question, whether his master is right or 
wrong ; while a minister of state declines to be the in- 
strument for giving effect to measures which he deems to 
be hurtful to his country. The chancellor of the Russian 
Empire was sagacious and politic. . . That the Czar was 
wrong in these transactions against Turkey no man knew 
better. . . But unhappily for the Czar and for his em- 
pire, the minister of state did not enjoy so commanding a 
station as to be able to put restraint upon his sovereign, 
nor even perhaps to offer him counsel in his angry mood.' 
We are now to see that in some respects our chief of 
staff came to a singular experience. 

" From the day of his appointment General Garfield 
become the intimate associate and confidential adviser of 
his chief. But he did not occupy so commanding a sta- 
tion as to be able to put restraint upon him. 

" The time of General Garfields arrival marks the 
beginning of that period of quarrels with the war depart- 
ment, in which General I'osecrans frittered away his in- 
fluence and paved the road for his removal. We have 



92 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

seen, in tracing the career of that great strategist and 
gallant soldier, how unwise he always was in caring for 
his own interests, and how imprudent was the most of his 
intercourse with his superiors. Yet he was nearly always 
right in his demands. General Garfield earnestly sym- 
pathized with his appeals for more cavalry and for re- 
volving arms, a demand which General Buell had made 
quite as emphatically as his successor, and with an ac- 
curate prediction of the evils that would flow from its 
absence. But Garfield did all that lay in his power to 
soften the tone of asperity which his chief adopted in 
his despatches to Washington. Sometimes he took the 
responsibility of totally suppressing an angry message. 
Oftener he ventured to soften the phraseology. But in 
all this there was a limit beyond which he could not go ; 
and when Rosecrans had pronounced certain statements 
of the department *a profound, grievous, cruel, and un- 
generous official and personal wrong,' the good offices of 
the chief of staff were no longer efficacious — the breach 
was irreparable. Thenceforward he could only strive to 
make victories in the field atone for errors in council." 

The army of General Rosecrans remained at Mur- 
freesboro from the 4 th of January to the 23d of June, 
1863. In his testimony before the committee on the 
conduct of the war. General Rosecrans explains this 
delay by the weakness of his cavalry force, the scarcity 
of forage, the nature of the roads, and the policy of 
holding Bragg on his front rather than driving him out 
of Tennessee, only that he might unite with Joseph E. 
Johnston and fall upon Grant who was still ineffectually 
struggling before Vicksburg. In his sketch of his mill- 



FROM SniLOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 93 

tnry career, officially furnished to the war department, 
he says : " The detachment of General Burnside's troops 
to Vicksburg, the uncertainty of the issue of our opera- 
tions there, and the necessity of ' nursing/ so to speak, 
General Bragg on my front, to keep him from retiring 
behind the mountain and the Tennessee, whence he could 
and would have been obliged to send heavy re-enforce- 
ments to Johnston, delayed the advance of my army 
until the 23d of June, when, the circumstances at Vicks- 
burgh and the arrival of all our cavalry horse warranting 
it, we began the campaign. And in his correspondence 
with the general-in-chief, he said that to fight in Tennes- 
see while Grant was about fighting at Vicksburg, would 
violate one of the fundamental maxims of war, the 
proper application of which would forbid this nation from 
engaging all its forces in the great West at the same 
time, so as to leave it without a single reserve to stem 
the current of possible disaster." 

" Some of these considerations are of undoubted 
weight ; but on the whole they will hardly seem now to 
have afforded sufficient cause for the delay. In point of 
fact, Bragg profited by it to detach a considerable portion 
of his troops to the rebel lines of the south-west, the very 
result which Rosecrans imagined himself to be hindering. 
There are no traces of complaint from Grant himself on 
the subject, but his friends were not silent ; and there is 
some reason to think that their importunity served still 
farther to exasperate the already dissatisfied feelings of 
the general-in-chief. 

" Presently there sprang up an extraordinary state 
of affairs between that officer and General Rosecrans. 



94 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

The latter asked for cavalry. General Ilalleck replied as 
if he thought it a complaint. Rosecrans telegraphed the 
Secretary of War. In reply came fresh hints from Hal- 
leck about the tendency of his subordinate to complain of 
his means instead of using them. Rosecrans begged for 
revolving rifles, adding almost piteously : * Don't be 
weary at my importunity. No economy can compare 
with that of furnishing revolving arms ; no mode of re- 
cruiting will so promptly and efficaciously strengthen us.* 
But the Prussian war not yet having been fought the 
practical general-in-chief considered such applications the 
extravagant whims of a dreaming theorist. 

" The despatches for ' cavalry,' * cavalry,' ' cavalry,' 
continued. On 20th March, General Rosecrans said : 

* Duty compels me to recall the attention of the War 
Department to the necessity of more cavalry here. Let 
it be clearly understood that the enemy have five to our 
one, and can, therefore, command the resources of the 
country and the services of the inhabitants.' On 29th 
March again : * General Rousseau would undertake to 
raise eight or ten thousand mounted infantry. I think 
the time very propitious.' On 24th April, still the same : 

* Cavalry horses are indispensable to our success here. 
This' has been stated and reiterated to the department; 
but horses have not been obtained.' Again, on 10th 
May, in reply to a letter of General Halleck, proving to 
him that he had cavalry enough : * We have at no time 
been able to turn out more than five thousand for actual 
duty. I am not mistaken in saying that this great army 
would gain more from ten thousand effective cavalry than 
from twenty thousand infantry.* On 26th July : ' I have 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 95 

sent General Rousseau to Washington, directed to lay 
before you his plan for obtaining from the disciplined 
troops recently mustered out in the East, such a mounted 
force as would enable us to command the country south 
of us.' This last application ended the list. General 
Rousseau returned, telling Rosecrans that he ' was satis- 
fied his official destruction was but a question of time 
and opportunity; the will to accomplish existed, and 
there was no use to hope for any assistance from the War 
Department. The Secretary of War had ' even gone so 
far as to say that he would be damned if he would give 
Rosecrans another man.' 

" For meantime, the high spirit and utter lack of cau- 
tion in personal matters which so distinguished General 
Rosecrans, had led to two other breaches with the de- 
partment. Either of them would have served to make 
his position as a successful general, vigorously prosecut- 
ing a triumphant campaign, sufficiently unpleasant. As 
a delaying general, furnishing excuses for not undertak- 
ing the campaign on which the Government, with all its 
power, was urging him, they were enough to work his 
ruin. Yet who can check a thrill of honest pride as he 
reads that an Ohio general, in such a plight, had sturdy 
manhood enough left to send a despatch like this to the 
all powerful general-in-chief. 

" MuRFREESBORO, 6th March, 1863. 

" General : — ^Yours of the 1st instant, announcing the 

offer of a vacant major-generalship in the regular army 

to the general in the field who first wins an important 

and decisive victory, is at hand. As an officer and a 



96 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

citizen I feel degraded at such an auctioneering of honors 

Have we a general who would fight for his own personal 

benefit when he would not for honor and his country ? 

He would come by his commission basely in that case, 

and deserve to be despised by men of honor. But are all 

the brave and honorable generals on an equality as to 

chances? If not, it is unjust to those who probably 

deserve most. 

"W. S. RosECRANS, Major-General. 

" To Major-General H. W. Halleck, 
General-in-Chief." 

" Under the merited sting of this incautious but unan- 
swerable rebuke, General Halleck renewed his complaints, 
found fault with Rosecrans' reports, and his failures to 
report, and even criticised the expenses of his telegraph- 
ing. At last, Rosecrans, chafing under one of these de- 
spatches, with absolutely characteristic lack of prudence, 
was stung into saying : ^ That I am very careful to in- 
form the department of my successes, and of all captures 
from the enemy, is not true, as the records of our office 
will show ; that I have failed to inform the Government 
of my defeats and losses is equally untrue, both in letter 
and in spirit. I regard the statement of these two propo- 
sitions of the War Department as a profound, grievous, 
cruel, and ungenerous official and personal wrong.' Was 
it wonderful now — human nature being, after all, only 
human nature — that Rosecrans' official destruction was 
but a question of time and opportunity ?" * 

* This summary of General Rosecrans' relations with the War Depart- 
ment is introduced here that the reader may have a clearer understanding 
of the delicate and often difficult duties of General Garfield's position. 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 97 

General Garfield regarded the organization of the 
army of General Rosecrans as radically defective, and 
so expressed himself to his chief. He was satisfied that 
it was a vital error to retain in command of the wings 
two generals who had shown themselves incapable, and 
one of his first official acts was to recommend the im- 
mediate displacement of Generals T. L. Crittenden and 
A. M. McCook. He urged General Rosecrans to ap- 
point in their places Generals John McDowell and Don 
Carlos Buell. He had the good sense to feel confidence 
in the genuine ability of those officers in spite of their 
misfortunes, and was influenced by the popular prejudice 
against those officers. He argued that McDowell and 
Buell were not only officers admirably suited to the 
commands he proposed for them, but that their grati- 
tude to General Rosecrans, in case of their appointment, 
for the opportunity to emerge from the cloud which ob- 
scured them, would stimulate them to a zealous and able 
execution of his plans. By making these appointments 
and retaining General George H. Thomas in his present 
command, the Army of the Cumberland would be the 
best officered force in the service of the Republic. Rose- 
crans admitted all this, and said he was convinced 
that Crittenden and McCook ought to be replaced by 
better men, but with characteristic kindness of heart 
said, " he hated to injure two such good fellows," and 
declined to remove them. 

The delay at Murfreesboro irritated the War De- 
partment, as has been said, and as the spring wore on, 
the Government demanded an advance with extraordinary 
vehemence. "General Rosecrans delayed, waiting for 



98 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

cavalry, for re-enforcements, for Grant's movements 
before Vicksburg, for the movements of the enemy, for 
the opinions of his generals." General Garfield was 
at first in sympathy with his chief in these delays. He 
fully realized the importance of delaying a movement 
until the army should be massed and strengthened ; but 
as time passed on, he too began to be impatient, and 
urged the commanding general to an immediate move- 
ment. " He h;id established a secret service system, 
then, perhaps, the most perfect in any of the Union ar- 
mies. From the intelligence it furnished, he felt sure 
that Bragg's force had been considerably reduced, and 
was now greatly inferior to that of R-osecrans. As he 
subsequently said, he refused to believe that this army 
which had defeated {i superior force at Stone River, 
could not now move upon an inferior one with reasonable 
prospects of success. Garfield continued to urge his 
views upon his commander, and, finally. General Rose- 
crans made a formal request to his corps, division, and 
cavalry commanders to submit in writing their views as 
to the propriety of an early advance. This request was 
addressed to seventeen generals, and with singular una- 
nimity each and all advised against a forward movement. 
They gave diverse reasons, but reached the same con- 
clusion. Not one favored an immediate advance, and 
nonje wer-e wiHing to advise even an early advance. 

"General Garfield collected the seventeen letters 
sent in from the generals in reply to the questions of 
their commander, and fairly reported their substance, 
coupled with a cogent argument against them, and in 
favor of an immediate movement. This report we 



FROM SHILOII TO CHICKAMAUGA. 99 

venture to pronounce the ablest military document 
known to have been submitted by a chief of staff to his 
superior during the war. General G.-irfield stood abso- 
lutely alone, every general commanding troops having, 
as we have seen, either openly opposed or failed to ap- 
prove an advance. But his statements were so clear 
and his arguments so forcible that he carried conviction. 
We give the full text of this report, which will be 
found of great interest to the reader. It is as follows : — 

" Headquarters, Department of the Cumberland, 
Murfreesloro, June 12, 1863. 

" General : — In your confidential letter of the 8th 
instant to the corps and division commanders and gen- 
erals of cavalry of this army, there were substantially 
five questions propounded for their consideration and an- 
swer, viz. : — 

"1. Has the enemy in our front been materially 
weakened by detachments to Johnston, or elsewhere ? 

" 2. Can this army advance on him at this time with 
strong reasonable chances of fighting a great and success- 
ful battle ? 

"3. Do you think an advance of our army at present 
likely to prevent additional re-enforcements being sent 
against General Grant by the enemy in our front ? 

" 4. Do you think an immediate advance of this army 
advisable ? 

" 5. Do you think an early advance advisable ? 

" Many of the answers to these questions are not 
categorical, and cannot be clearly set down either as af- 
firmative or negative. Especially in answer to the first 



100 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

question there is much indefiniteness, resulting from the 
difference of judgment as to how great a detachment 
could be considered a * material reduction' of Bragg's 
strength. For example : one officer thinks it has been 
reduced ten thousand, but not * materially weakened.' 

" The answers to the second question are modified 
in some instances by the opinion that the rebels will fall 
back behind the Tennessee River, and thus no battle can 
be fought either successful or unsuccessful. 

" So far as these opinions can be stated in tabular 

form, they will stand thus : 

Yes. No. 

Answer to first question 6 11 

Answer to second question 2 11 

Answer to third question 4 10 

Answer to fourtli question 15 

Answer to fifth question 2 

" On the fifth question three gave it as their opinion 
that this army ought to advance as soon as Vicksburg 
falls, should that event happen. 

" The following is a summary of the reasons as- 
signed why we should not, at this time, advance upon 
the enemy : 

" 1. With Hooker's army defeated, and Grant's bend- 
ing all its energies in a yet undecided struggle, it is bad 
policy to risk our only reserve army to the chances of a 
general engagement. A failure here would have most 
disastrous effects on our lines of communication, and on 
politics in the loyal States. 

"2. We should be compelled to fight the enemy on' 
his own ground, or follow him in a fruitless stern chase ;' 
or if we attempted to outflank him and turn his position. 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 101 

we should expose our line of communication and run 
the risk of being pushed back into a rough country well- 
known to the enemy and little to ourselves. 

" 3. In case the enemy should fall back without ac- 
cepting battle he could make our advance very slow, and 
with a comparatively small force posted in the gaps of 
the mountains could hold us back while he crossed the 
Tennessee River, where he would be measurely secure 
and free to send re-enforcements to Johnston. His forces 
in East Tennessee could seriously harass our left flank, 
and constantly disturb our communications. 

" 4. The withdrawal of Burnside's Ninth Army Corps 
deprive us of an important reserve and flank protection, 
thus increasing the difficulty of an advance. 

" 5. General Hurlbut has sent the most of his forces 
away to General Grant, thus leaving West Tennessee un- 
covered, and laying our right flank and rear open to raids 
of the enemy. 

" The following incidental opinions are expressed : 

" 1. One officer thinks it probable that the enemy 
has been strengthened rather than weakened, and that 
he (the enemy) would have a reasonable prospect of vic- 
tory in a general battle. 

" 2. One officer believes the result of a general battle 
would be doubtful, a victory barren, and a defeat most 
disastrous. 

" 3. Three officers believe that an advance would 
bring on a general engagement. Three others believe it 
would not. 

" 4. Two officers express the opinion that the chances 
of success in a general battle are nearly equal. 



102 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" 5. One officer expresses the belief that our ?irmy 
has reached its maximum strength and efficiency, and 
that inactivity will seriously impair its effectiveness. 

" 6. Two officers say that an increase of our cavalry 
by about six thousand men would materially change the 
aspect of our affairs and give us a decided advantage. 

" In addition to the above summary, I have the 
honor to submit an estimate of the strength of Bragg's 
army, gathered from all the data I have been able to ob- 
tain, including the estimate of the general commanding 
in his official report of the battle of Stone River, and 
facts gathered from prisoners, deserters, and refugees, 
and from rebel newspapers. After the battle Bragg con- 
solidated many of his decimated regiments and irregular 
organizations, and at the time of his sending re-enforce- 
ments to Johnston his army had reached its greatest 
effective strength. It consisted of five divisions of in- 
fantry, composed of ninety-four regiments and two in- 
dependent battalions of sharp-shooters ; say ninety-five 
regiments. By a law of the Confederate Congress, regi- 
ments are consolidated when their effective strength falls 
below two hundred and fifty men. Even the regiments 
formed by such consolidation (which may reasonably be 
regarded as the fullest) must fall below five hundred. I 
am satisfied that four hundred is a large estimate of the 
average strength. 

" The force then would be — 

Infantry, 95 Regimenta, 400 each 38,000 

Cavalry, 35 " say 500 " 17,500 

ArtUlery, 26 Batteries, say 100 " 2,600 

Total 58,100 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 103 

« 

" This force has been reduced by detachments to 
Johnston. It is as well known as we can ever expect to 
ascertain such facts, that three brigades have gone from 
McCown's division, and two or three from Breckinridge's ; 
say two. It is clear that there are now but four infan- 
try divisions in Bragg's army, the fourth being composed 
of fragments of McCown's and Breckinridge's divisions, 
and must be much smaller than the average. Deducting 
the five brigades, and supposing them composed of only 
four regiments each, which is below the general average, 
it gives an infantry reduction of twenty regiments, four 
hundred each : eight thousand, leaving a remainder of 
thirty thousand. 

" It is clearly ascertained that at least two brigades 
of cavalry have been sent from Van Dorn's command to 
Mississippi, and it is asserted in the Chattanooga Rebel 
of June 11th, that General Morgan's command has been 
permanently detached and sent to Eastern Kentucky. 
It is not certainly known how large his division is, but it 
is known to contain at least two brigades. Taking this 
minimum as the fact, we have a cavidry reduction of four 
brigades. 

" Taking the lowest estimate, four regiments to the 
brigade, we have a reduction by detachment of sixteen 
regiments, five hundred each, leaving his present effective 
cavalry force nine thousand five hundred. 

" With the nine brigades of the two arms thus de- 
tached it will be safe to say there have gone — 

6 Batteries, 80 men each 480 

Leaving him 20 Batteries 2,120 

Making a total reduction of 16,480 

Leaving of the three arms 41,680 



104 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" In this estimate of Bragg's present strength I have 
placed all doubts in his favor, and I have no question 
that my estimate is considerably beyond the truth. 
General Sheridan, who has taken great pains to collect 
evidence on this point, places it considerably below 
these figures. But assuming these to be correct, and 
granting what is still more improbable, that Bragg would 
abandon all his rear posts, and entirely neglect his com- 
munications and could bring his last man into battle, I 
next ask. What have we with which to oppose him ? 

" The last official report of effective strength, now on 
file in the office of the assistant adjutant-general, is dated 
June 11, and shows that we have in this department, 
omitting all officers and enlisted men attached to depart- 
ment, corps, division, and brigade headquarters : — 

" 1. Infantry — One hundred and sevent^^-three regi- 
ments ; ten battalions sharp-shooters ; four battalions 
pioneers, and one regiment engineers and mechanics, with 
a total effective strength of seventy thousand nine hun- 
dred and eighteen. 

" 2. Cavalry — Twenty-seven regiments and one un- 
attached company, eleven thousand eight hundred and 
thirteen. 

"3. Artillery — Forty-seven and a half batteries field 
artillery, consisting of two hundred and ninety-two guns 
and five hundred and sixty-nine men, making a general 
total of eighty-seven thousand eight hundred. 

" Leaving out all commissioned officers, this army 
represents eighty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty- 
seven bayonets and sabres. 

" This report does not include the Fifth Iowa Cav- 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICK AMAUGA. 105 

airy, six hundred strong, lately armed ; nor the First 
Wisconsin Cavalry ; nor Coburn's brigade of infantry, 
now arriving ; nor the two thousand three hundred and 
ninety-four convalescents now on ligl^t duty in ^ Fortress 
Rosecrans.' 

" There are detached from this force as follows : 

At Gallatin 969 

At Carthage 1,149 

At Fort Douelsou 1,485 

At Clarksville '. . 1,138 

AtNashville 7,293 

At Franklin 900 

At Lavergne 2,117 

Total 15,050 

"With these posts as they are, and leaving two 
thousand five hundred efficient men in addition to the 
two thousand three hundred and ninety-four convales- 
cents to hold the works at this place, there will be left 
sixty-five thousand one hundred and thirty-seven bayo- 
nets and sabres to throw against Bragg's forty-one thou- 
sand six hundred and eighty. 

" I beg leave, also, to submit the following consid- 
erations : — 

" 1. Bragg's army is now weaker than it has been 
since the battle of Stone River, or is likely to be again 
for the present, while our army has reached its maximum 
strength, and we have no right to expect re-enforcements 
for several months, if at all. 

" 2. Whatever be the result at Vicksburg, the de- 
termination of its fate Will give large re-enforcements to 
Bragg. If Grant is successful, his army will require 
many weeks to recover from the shock and strain of his 



106 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

late campaign, while Johnston will send back to Bragg 
a force sufficient to insure the safety of Tennessee. If 
Grant fails, the same result will inevitably follow, so far 
as Bragg's army is concerned. 

" 3. No man can predict with certainty the result of 
any battle, however great the disparity in numbers. 
Such results are in the hand of God. But, viewing the 
question in the light of human calculation, I refuse to 
entertain a doubt that this army, which in January last 
defeated Bragg's superior numbers, can not overwhelm 
his present greatly inferior forces. 

" 4. The most unfavorable course for us that Bragg 
c6uld take would be to fall back without giving us battle, 
but this would be very disastrous to him. Besides the 
loss of materiel of war, and the abandonment of the rich 
and abundant harvest now nearly ripe in Central Tennes- 
see, he would lose heavily by desertion. It is well 
known that a widespread dissatisfaction exists among 
his Kentucky and Tennessee troops. They are already 
deserting in large numbers. A retreat would greatly 
increase both the desire and the opportunity for deser- 
tion, and would very materially reduce his physical and 
moral strength. While it would lengthen our communi- 
cations, it would give us possession of McMinnville, and 
enable us to threaten Chattanooga and East Tennessee ; 
and it would not be unreasonable to expect an early oc- 
cupation of the former place. 

" 5. But the chances are more than ever that a 
sudden and rapid movement would compel a general 
engagement, and the defeat of Bragg would be in the 
highest deoree disastrous to the rebellion. 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 107 

^' 6. The turbulent aspect of politics in the loyal 
States renders a decisive blow against the enemy at this 
time of the highest importance to the success of the 
Government at the polls, and in the enforcement of the 
Conscription Act. 

" 7. The Government and the War Department be- 
lieve that this army ought to move upon the enemy. 
The army desires it, and the country is anxiously hoping 
for it. 

" 8. Our true objective point is the rebel army, 
whose last reserves are substantially in the field, and an 
eJBfective blow will crush the sh'ell and soon be followed 
by the collapse of the rebel government. 

" 9. We have, in my judgment, wisely delayed a gen- 
eral movement hitherto, till your army could be massed, 
and your cavalry could be mounted. Your mobile force 
can now be concentrated in twenty-four hours, and your 
cavalry, if not equal in numerical strength to that of the 
enemy, is greatly superior in efficiency and morals. 

" For these reasons I believe an immediate advance 
of all our forces is advisable, and under the providence of 
God, will be successful. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

[Signed.] J. A. Garfield, 

Brigadier-General, Chief of Staff. 

" Major-General Rosecrans, 

Commanding Department, Cumberland." 

General Rosecrans acknowledged the force of the ar- 
guments of his chief of staff, and the :^4th of June, 1863, 
twelve days after the above report was written, the army 



108 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

moved forward from Murfreesboro toward the Confeder- 
ate position fit Tullahoma. The advance was severely 
condemned by the leading generals of the Union army. 
On the morning it was begun, General Thomas L. Crit- 
tenden, one of the corps commanders, went to headquar- 
ters and said to General Garfield : " It is understood, sir, 
by the general officers of the army, that this movement is 
your work. I wish you to understand that it is a rash 
and fatal move, for which you will be held responsible." 

The Confederate army, under General Bragg, occu- 
pied a strongly intrenched position at Tullahoma, with 
advanced positions at Shelbyville and Wartrace. The 
line was a very strong one, and the task before General 
Rosecrans was not to attack it, but to manoeuvre so 
as to compel the Confederates to relinquish it without a 
battle. The movements by which he accomplished this 
were so brilliant and successful that they drew praise 
from even General Hallcck. Gordon Granger's division 
was thrown forward boldly towards Shelbyville, as if to 
attack that place ; and while Bragg's attention was taken 
up with this movement, General Rosecrans with the rest 
of the army marched rapidly to the right and seized the 
mountain passes which commanded the Confederate line 
of retreat. Bragg now perceived the true nature of the 
Union movement, and hastily drew in his forces from 
Shelbyville. Rosecrans thereupon moved forward upon 
Tullahoma, and General Bragg, who was unwilling to fight 
for that position, abandoned it, and retreated across the 
Tennessee River to Chattanooga. " Thus closed," says 
General Rosecrans, " a nine days' campaign which drove 
the enemy from two fortified positions, and gave us pos- 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 109 

session of Middle Tennessee, conducted in one of the 
most extraordinary rains ever known in Tennessee at 
that period of the year, over a soil that became almost a 
quicksand. These results were far more successful than 
was anticipated, and could only have been obtained by a 
surprise as to the direction and force of our movements." 
Sixteen hundred and thirty-four prisoners, six pieces of 
artillery, and large quantities of stores were taken from 
the Confederates. Rosecrans' loss was only five hundred 
and sixty. 

" There now sprang up renewed differences between 
General Rosecrans and the War Department. In the 
general policy that controlled the movements of the army 
Garfield heartily sympathized ; he had, in fact, aided to 
give shape to that policy. But he deplored his chiefs 
testy manner of conducting his defence to the complaints 
of the War Department, and did his best to soften the 
asperities of the correspondence." 

After Bragg retired to Chattanooga, Rosecrans moved 
to Stevenson, Alabama, halting there for over a month 
to repair the railroad and bring up his supplies. On the 
16th of August his army moved against Chattanooga, and 
General Burnside, with a strong column, advanced from 
Kentucky into East Tennessee. Finding the enemy's 
position at Chattanooga too strong to be carried by a 
direct assault, Rosecrans endeavored to turn it and cut 
Bragg off from Northern Georgia, but on the 8th of Sep- 
tember the Confederates evacuated Chattanooga and fell 
back towards Dalton. 

Rosecrans, believing that Bragg was in full retreat for 
Georgia, started at once in pursuit, disposing his forces 



110 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

in such a manner as to cut off his adversary. These 
movements he hoped would enable him to capture the 
whole rebel army, and it is likely they would have suc- 
ceeded had the situation of that army been as desperate 
as he supposed it. But General Brngg, instend of fly- 
ing southward, had merely evacuated Chattanooga, and 
fallen back a short distance to secure his junction with 
Longstreet's corps, which was on its way from Virginia 
to join him. As soon as Longstreet arrived within sup- 
porting distance, Bragg suddenly wheeled about and 
marched back to give Rosecrans battle. 

This movement took the Union commander com- 
pletely by surprise, and embarrassed him considerably. 
Having no idea that Bragg meant anything but absolute 
flight, he had divided his army with the hope of inter- 
cepting him, and. now the various corps were situated 
in such a manner as to expose them to the danger of 
being beaten in detail by the enemy's whole force. 
" The corps of General McCook was separated from 
General Thomas by a march of nearly three days. 
General Crittenden could not re-enforce General Thomas 
without exposing Chattanooga, and General Thomas 
could not move to General Crittenden's position with- 
out exposing General McCook. It was a terrible situa- 
tion for the army, and might have been fatal to it had 
General Bragg moved with more rapidity. McCook 
was at once ordered to join Thomas, which he did by a 
forced march, reaching him late on the 17th. Every 
moment of Bragg's delay was carefully economized, and 
when McCook came up, the army was moved to Gordon's 
Mills, on the west side of the Chickaraauga. 



FROM SniLOH TO CHICK AM AUGA. Ill 

" General Bragg now moved his army by divisions, 
and crossed the Chickamauga at several fords and 
bridges north of Gordon's Mills, up to which he ordered 
the Virginian troops which had crossed many miles 
•below, and near to which he attempted to concentrate. 
At this time the right of General Rosecrans really 
rested on Gordon's Mills. General Thomas had moved 
on until his left division under General Brannan, cov- 
ered the Bossville road. General Baird was on General 
Brannan's right, then followed successively Generals 
Johnson's, Reynolds', Palmer's and Van Cleve's divis- 
ions. General Wood covered Gordon's Mills ford. 
General Negley, four miles farther south, held Owen's 
Gap. Generals Davis and Sheridan were on the march 
south of General Negley. General Wilder, with four 
regiments and a light battery, was posted at the right, 
near Gordon's Mills. General Gordon Granger's forces 
were held in reserve some distance back on the Ross- 
ville road. Such was the position on Saturday, the 
19th. The battle which now ensued, opened about ten 
o'clock. The first attack of the enemy was upon the 
left wing of Gen. Rosecrans, which the enemy endeav- 
ored to turn, so as to occupy the road to Chattanooga. 
But all their efforts for tiiis object failed. The centre 
was next assailed, and temporarily driven back, but 
being promptly re-enforced, maintained its ground. As 
night approached the battle ceased, and the combatants 
rested on their arms. Gen. Bragg now issued an order 
dividing the forces of his army into two corps or wings. 
The right was placed under the command of Lieut.-Gen. 
Polk, and the left under Lieut.-Gen. Longstreet. 



112 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" Toward morning of the next day, the array of 
General Rosecrans changed its position slightly to the 
rear, and contracted the extended lines of the previous 
day. Trains were moving northward on all the roads in 
the rear of Chattanooga, and the wounded were taken 
from the hospitals, which had become exposed by the 
concentration of the forces to the left. General Thomas 
still held the left with the divisions of Generals Palmer 
and Johnson attached to his corps and thrown in the 
centre. General Brannan was retired slightly, with his 
regiments arrayed in echelon. General Van Cleve was 
held in reserve on the west side of the first road in the 
rear of the line. Generals Wood, Davis, and Sheridan 
followed next, the last being on the extreme left. 
General Lytle occupied an isolated position at Gor- 
don's Mills. 

"Prders were given by General Bragg to Lieuten- 
ant-General Polk to commence the attack at daylight 
on the next morning. These orders were immediately 
opened by him ; but prior to giving the order to move 
forward to the attack in the morning, General Polk 
discovered that, owing to a want of precaution, a por- 
tion of the left wing, amounting to a whole division, had 
been formed in front of his line, and that if the order to 
make the attack at daylight was obeyed, this division 
must inevitably be slaughtered. The battle was finally 
opened about half past nine a. m., by a forward move- 
ment of General Breckinridge, accompanied by General 
Cleburne, against the left and centre of General Bose- 
crans. Division after division was pushed forward 
to assist the attacking masses of the enemy, but with- 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 113 

out success. The ground was held by General Thomas 
for more than two hours. Meantime, as General Rey- 
nolds was sorely pressed, General Wood was ordered, 
as he supposed, to march instantly by the left flank 
pass General Brannan, and go to the relief of General 
Reynolds, and that Generals Davis and Sheridan were 
to shift over to the left, and close up the line. General 
Rosecrans reports that the order was to close upon 
General Reynolds. General. Wood says that General 
Brannan was in line between his and General Rey- 
nolds' division. 

" A gap was thus formed in the line of battle, of 
which the enemy took advantage, and striking General 
Davis in his flank and rear, threw his whole division 
into confusion. Passing through this break in General 
Rosecran's line, the enemy cut off his right and centre, 
and attacked General Sheridan's division, which was ad- 
vancing to the support of the left. After a brave but 
fruitless effort against this torrent of the enemy, he was 
compelled to give way, but afterward rallied a considera- 
ble portion of his force, and by a circuitous route joined 
General Thomas, who had now to breast the tide of 
battle against the whole army of the enemy. The right 
and part of the centre had been completely broken, and 
fled in confusion from the field, carrying with them to 
Chattanooga their commanders. Generals McCook and 
Crittenden, and also General Rosecrans, who was on 
that part of the line. General Garfield, his chief of staff, 
however, made his way to the left, and joined General 
Thomas, who still retained his position. His ranks had 
now assumed a crescent form, with his flanks supported 



114 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

by the lower spurs of the mountain, and here, * like 
a lion at bay, he repulsed the terrible assaults of the 
enemy.' 

" About half-past three p. m. the enemy discovered a 
gap in the hills, in the rear of the right flank of General 
Thomas, and General Longstreet commenced pressing his 
columns through the passage. At this time, Major- 
General Granger, who had been posted with his reserves 
to cover the left and rear, arrived on the field. He im- 
mediately attacked the forces of General Longstreet with 
General Steedman's brigade of cavalry. The conflict at 
this point is thus described by General Halleck : ' In 
the words of General Rosecrans' report, " swift was the 
charge, and terrible the conflict ; but the enemy was 
broken." A thousand of our brave men killed and 
wounded paid for its possession ; but we held the gap. 
Two divisions of Longstreet's corps confronted the posi- 
tion. Determined to take it, they successively came to 
the assault. A battery of six guns placed in the gorge 
poured death and slaughter into them. They charged 
within a few yards of the pieces, but our grape and 
canister, and the leaden hail of musketry, delivered in 
sparing but terrible volleys, from cartridges taken in 
many instances from the boxes of their fallen com- 
panions, was too much even for Longstreet's men. 
About sunset they made their last charge, when our 
men, being out of ammunition, moved on them with the 
bayonet, and they gave way, to return no more. In the 
meantime the enemy made repeated attempts to carry 
General Thomas' position on the left and front, but were 
as often thrown back with great loss. Near nightfall 



FROM SIIILOH TO CIIICKAMAUGA. 115 

the enemy fell back beyond the range of our artillery, 
leaving General Thomas victorious on the hard fought 
field.' 

" During the night, Gen. Thomas fell back to Hoss- 
ville, leaving the dead, and many of the wounded in the 
hands of the enemy. Gen. Sheridan, who had been cut 
off by the advance of the enemy, as he was upon the ex- 
treme right, gathered his brigades, and struck across Mis- 
sionary Ridge, directly to the west. The enemy were in 
possession of the country north of him. As he reached 
the top of the ridge, he caused the 'assembly' to be blown, 
and picked up all the stragglers from the other divisions 
that he could find. He had lost three pieces of artillery, 
but in his progress met a whole battery which had been 
abandoned, and took it in charge. Passing the enemy's 
flank, and regaining the road on the ridge, he turned east 
through Rossville, and, without halting, re-enforced Gen. 
Thomas at midnight. The position near Rossville was 
held during Monday without serious molestation from the 
enemy, and in the night the entire force was withdrawn 
to Chattanooga." * 

In the battle of Chickamauga General Rosecrans lost 
16,851 men (4,945 being captured), thirty-six pieces of 
cannon, and 8,450 small arms. The enemy's loss was 
18,000 (2,003 prisoners being taken by us). The battle 
was a terrible blow to us. The right and centre were 
totally defeated, and only the glorious stand made by 
the left wing under General Thomas saved the army 
from destruction or capture. 

After the battle, Bragg advanced to Missionary Ridge 

* " Army Operations." Annual Encyclopaedia, 1863. 



116 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

and Lookout ^Mountain, investing the position of oyr 
army at Chattanooga, and cutting off its supplies. 

The part borne by General Garfield in this terrible 
battle was important and honorable, " He wrote every 
order issued that day — one only excepted. This he did 
rarely as an amanuensis, but rather on the suggestions of 
his own judgment, afterwards submitting what he had 
prepared to Rosecrans for approval or change. The one 
order which he did not write was the fatal order to Wood 
which lost the battle. The meaning was correct; the 
words, however, did not clearly represent what Rosecrans 
meant, and the division commander in question so inter- 
preted them as to destroy the right wing. 

" The general commanding and his chief of staff were 
caught in the tide of the disaster and borne back toward 
Chattanooga." The chief of staff was sent to communi- 
cate with Thomas, while the general proceeded to prepare 
for the reception of the routed army. 

" Such at least were the statements of the reports, 
and, in a technical sense, they were true. It should 
never be forgotten, however, in Garfield's praise, that it 
was on his own earnest representations that he was sent 
— that, in fact, he rather procured permission to go to 
Thomas, and so back into the battle, than received or- 
ders to do so. He refused to believe that Thomas was 
routed or the battle lost. He found the road environed 
with dangers ; some of his escort were killed, and they 
all narrowly escaped death or capture. But he bore 
to Thomas the first news that officer had received of the 
disaster on the right, and gave the information on which 
he was able to extricate his command. At seven o'clock 



FROM SHILOH TO CHICKAMAUGA. 117 

tliJit evening, under the personul supervision of General 
Gordon Granger and liimself, a shotted salute from a 
battery of six Napoleon guns was fired into the woods 
after the last of the retreating assailants. They were 
the last shots of the battle of Chickamauga, and what was 
left of the Union army was master of the field. For the 
time the enemy evidently regarded himself as repulsed ; 
and Garfield said that night, and has always since main- 
tained, that there was no necessity for the immediate 
retreat on Rossville." 

The Union army fell back to Chattanooga. General 
Garfield gave his best energies to the task of getting it. 
into condition for further service. He ably seconded 
General Rosecrans in his efforts to hold his position 
against the Confederates who had advanced to Chat- 
tanooga and had laid siege to the place. After a few 
weeks of this service, he was sent to Washington by 
General Rosecrans as the bearer of despatches. On the 
18th of October General Rosecrans was removed from 
the coaimand of the army of the Cumberland. Upon 
reaching Washington, General Garfield learned that he 
had been promoted by the President to the rank of 
major-general of volunteers, "for gallant and meritorious 
conduct at the battle of Chickamauga." 



CHAPTER V. 

GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 

General Garfield Elected to Congress from the Western Reserve District — 
Pesires to Remain in the Army — His Reasons for Resigning his Com- 
mission and Entering Congress — ^Character of his District — Reasons for 
his Election — Decides to Leave the Army — Enters Congress — Takes a 
Commanding Position in the House— Appointed to the Military Com- 
mittee — Estimate of him as one of the Leaders of the Republican Party 
— His Habits of Industry — His Mode of Rest — Mr. Long, of Ohio, pro- 
poses to Recognize the Southern Confederacy — A Brilliant Invective — 
An Impressive Scene in the House — Delight of the Republicans over 
Garfield's Reply — It Ensures his Success in the House — Mr. Garfield in 
Demand as a Speaker — The Inconvenience of being Too Ready an Orator 
— General Garfield's Account of Congress — Its History — Its Great Ser- 
vices — Its Intimate Connection with the People — How it has become the 
National Mouthpiece and Defender — Congress and the Constitution — 
Congress and the President — Congress and the People — A Statesman's 
Views. 

The battle of Chickamauga practically closed General 
Garfield's military career. A new field of service was 
now opened to him. In 1862, while he was still in the 
army, the people of his district elected him to Congress. 
This was a high compliment, for the district had been 
represented by men of great prominency in the Repub- 
lican party, and the people had come to expect a high 
degree of ability from their representative. General 
Garfield was strongly tempted to remain in the army. 
He had risen steadily to the grade of Major-General, and 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 119 

had won a reputation that was both honorable and en- 
viable. He was highly esteemed by the Government, 
and was regarded by the War Department as one of the 
most trusted and competent officers in the service. It 
was very certain that he would be assigned to impor- 
tant commands in the future, and would reap additional 
honors and reputation. His future, indeed, promised to 
be a brilliant one. He was also a poor man, and his 
'Major-General's pay was more than double the salary of 
a congressman. There were, therefore, many induce- 
ments to him to remain in the service. He thought 
the matter over earnestly, and came to the conclusion 
that it was his duty to resign his commission and accept 
the seat in the House of Representatives to which he 
had been elected. He was one of those who thought 
that a few months more would end the war, and be- 
lieved that he could be spared from the field. He felt 
that, as his constituents had called him from the army 
and sent him to Congress, it was his duty to obey their 
wishes and take his seat. Moreover, his army friends 
advised him urgently to enter Congress, as they believed 
that, coming fresh from the army and understanding its 
wants, he could render good service by promoting legis- 
lation calculated to maintain and improve the efficiency 
of the service. Influenced by these views. General Gar- 
field determined to sacrifice his own wishes, and on the 
5th of December, 1863, he resigned his commission, after 
nearly three years of service. He did this very reluc- 
tantly. 

The Congressional district in which General Garfield 
lived, was the Western Reserve of Ohio, and had long 



120 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

been represented by Joshua R. Giddings, the veteran 
leader of the Free-soil party. Mr. Giddings was so 
regularly returned to Congress by his constituents that 
he finally came to regard his nomination and election as 
fixed beyond all doubt, and grew careless of his interests. 
This over-confidence led to his overthrow. In 1858 a 
Mr. Hutchins, an ambitious lawyer of the district, took 
advantage of Mr. Giddings' indifference, to carry the 
convention against him, and thus secured the nomination 
for himself. His election followed, as a matter of course. 
The friends of Mr. Giddings never forgave him for his 
course, and determined to put him out of Congress at the 
earliest practicable moment. Mr. Giddings, in the mean- 
time, was appointed Consul to Montreal, and was so well 
satisfied with his position that he did not care to make 
the fight necessary to get back to Congress. His sup- 
porters, therefore, resolved to nominate General Garfield 
in his place, believing that his great popularity would 
make his election an easy matter. The convention, 
therefore nominated General Garfield, without asking his 
consent, and he was triumphantly elected by the people, 
as has been stated, in 1862. 

" When he heard of the nomination, Garfield reflected 
that it would be fifteen months before the Congress to 
which he had been elected would meet, and believing, as 
did everyone else, that the war could not possibly last 
a year longer, concluded to accept. * I have often heard 
him,' says a friend, ' express regret that he did not help 
to fight the war through, and say that he would never 
have left the army to go to Congress had he foreseen 
that the struggle would last beyond the year 1863.' " 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 121 

Mr. Garfield took his seat in the House of Repre- 
sentatives in December, 1863. He was appointed a 
member of the committee on military affairs, of which 
General Schenck, who was also fresh from the army, 
was chairman. He did good service on this committee 
in helping to carry through the measures which re- 
united the army and maintained its efficiency during the 
last years of the war. He knew the needs of the army 
thoroughly, and was always its faithful and judicious 
friend, so that he was enabled to render to his country 
quite as good service in the halls of Congress as he could 
have performed in the field. He was also appointed 
chairman of a select committee of seven charged with 
investigating alleged frauds in the money-printing bureau 
of the Treasury Department. He at once took and main- 
tained a commanding position in the House. He was 
known as a powerful speaker, remarkably ready and able 
in debate. A recent writer, referring to his position as 
one of the leaders of his party in the House, says : 

"Asa leader in the House he is more cautious and 
less dashing than Blaine, and his judicial turn of mind 
makes him too prone to look for two sides of a ques- 
tion to be an efficient partisan. When the issue fairly 
touches his convictions, however, he becomes thoroughly 
aroused, and strikes tremendous blows. Blaine's tactics 
were to continually harass the enemy by sharp-shooting 
surprises and picket-firing. Garfield waits for an oppor- 
tunity to deliver a pitched battle, and his generalship is 
shown to the best advantage when the fight is a fair one 
and waged on grounds where each party thinks itself 
the strongest. Then his solid shot of arurument are ex- 



122 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ceedingly effective. On the stump Garfield is one of 
the very best orators in the Republican party. He has 
a good voice, an air of evident sincerity, great clearness 
and vigor of statement, and a way of knitting his argu- 
ments together so as to make a speech deepen its im- 
pression on the mind of the hearer until the climax is 
reached. 

" Of his industry and studious habits a great deal 
might be said, but a single illustration will have to suffice 
here. Once during the busiest part of a very busy session 
at Washington I found him in his library, behind a big 
barricade of books. This was no unusual sight, but when 
I glanced at the volumes I saw that they were all differ- 
ent editions of Horace, or books relating to that poet. * I 
find I am overworked and need recreation,' said the Gen- 
eral. ' Now, m}^ theory is that the best way to rest the 
mind is not to let it be idle, but to put it at something 
quite outside of the ordinary line of its employment. So 
I am resting by learning all the Congressional library can 
show about Horace, and the various editions and transla- 
tions of his poems.' " 

One of General Garfield's most remarkable speeches 
in the House, and one that secured his position as a leader 
in his party, was delivered within a few months after his 
entrance into Congress. On the 8th of April, 1864, Mr. 
Alexander Long, a representative from Ohio, delivered 
an exceedingly ultra Peace-Democratic speech, proposing 
the recognition of the Southern Confederacy. The speech 
attracted to an unusual degree the attention of the House, 
and was listened to with indignation, the orator being al- 
lowed to state his whole case fully and fairly. It was 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 123 

evident from General Garfield's manner that he meant to 
reply, and by common consent he was allowed to speak 
not only for himself, but for the great party to which he 
belonged. As soon as Mr. Long took his seat, General 
Garfield rose. In a few thrilling sentences he riveted the 
attention of the House, and held it throughout the whole 
of his brilliant invective. He had scarcely commenced to 
speak when the members from the remoter parts of the 
hall began to crowd around him and listen to him with 
breathless attention. The speech was as follows : 

" Mr. Chairman. — I should be obliged to you if you 
would direct the sergeant-at-arms to bring a white flag 
and plant it in the aisle between myself and my colleague 
who has just addressed you. 

" I recollect on one occasion when two great armies 
stood face to face, under a white flag just planted, I ap- 
proached a company of men dressed in the uniform of the 
rebel Confederacy, and reached out my hand to one of the 
number, and told him I respected him as a brave man. 
Though he wore the emblems of his disloyalty and trea- 
son, still underneath his vestments I beheld a brave and 
honest soul. 

" I would reproduce that scene here this afternoon. I 
say were there such a flag of truce — but God forgive me 
if I should do it under any other circumstances ! — I would 
reach out this right hand and ask that gentleman to take 
it, because I honor his bravery and honesty. I believe 
what has just fallen from his lips is the honest sentiment 
of his heart, and in uttering it he has made a new epoch 
in the history of this war ; he has done a new thing un- 
der the sun; he has done a brave thing. It is braver 



124 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

than to face cannon and musketry, and I honor him for 
his candor and frankness. 

" But now I ask you to take away the flag of truce, 
and I will go back inside the Union lines and speak of 
what he has done. I am reminded of it by a distin- 
guished character in ' Paradise Lost.' When he had re- 
belled against the glory of God, and ' led away a third 
part of heaven's sons conjured against the Highest ;' when 
after terrible battles in which mountains and hills were 
hurled by each contending host ' with jaculations dire ;' 
when, at last, the leader and his hosts were hurled ' nine 
times the space that measures day and night,' and after 
the terrible fall lay stretched prone on the burning lake, 
Satan lifted up his shattered hulk, crossed the abyss, 
looked down into paradise, and soliloquizing, said : 

" ' Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell !' It seems 
to me he expressed the very sentiment to which you have 
just listened ; uttered by one no less brave, malign, and 
fallen. This man gathers up the meaning of this great 
contest, the philosophy of the moment, the prophecies of 
the hour, and in sight of the paradise of victory and peace, 
utters them all in this wail of terrible despair, ' Which 
way I fly is hell.' lie ought to add, ' Myself am hell !" 

" Mr. Chairman, I am reminded by the occurrences of 
this afternoon of two characters in the war of the Revolu- 
tion, as compared with two others in the war of to-day. 

" The first was Lord Fairfax, who dwelt near the 
Potomac, a few miles from us. When the great contest 
was opened between the mother country and the colonies, 
Lord Fairfax, after a protracted struggle with his own 
heart, decided that he must go with the mother country. 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 125 

He gathered his mantle about him and went over grandly 
and solemnly. 

" There was another man who cast in his lot with the 
struggling colonists, and continued with them till the war 
was wellnigh ended. In an hour of darkness that just 
preceded the glory of the morning, he hatched the trea- 
son to surrender forever all that had been gained to the 
enemies of his country. Benedict Arnold was the man ! 

" Fairfax and Arnold find their parallel in the struggle 
of to-day. 

" When this war began man}' good men stood hesitat- 
ing and doubting what they ought to do. Robert E. Lee 
sat in his house across the river here, doubting and de- 
laying, and going off at last almost tearfully to join the 
army of his State. He reminds one in some respects of 
Lord Fairfax, the stately royalist of the Revolution. 

" But now, when tens of thousands of brave souls 
have gone up to God under the shadow of the flag; 
when thousands more, maimed and shattered in the con- 
test, are sadly awaiting the deliverance of death; now, 
when three years of terrific warfare have raged over us ; 
when our armies have pushed the Rebellion back over 
mountains and rivers, and crowded it into narrow limits, 
until a wall of fire girds it ; now, when the uplifted hand 
of a majestic people is about to hurl the bolts of its con- 
quering power upon the Rebellion ; now, in the quiet of 
this hall, hatched in the lowest depths of a similar dark 
treason, there rises a Benedict Arnold and proposes to 
surrender all up, body and spirit, the Nation and the Flag, 
its genius and its honor, now and forever, to the accursed 
traitors to our country ! And that proposition comes — 



126 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

God forgive and pity my beloved State ! — it comes from 
a citizen of the time honored and loyal Commonwealth of 
Ohio! 

" I implore you, brethren, in this House, to believe 
that not many births ever gave pangs to my mother State 
such as she suffered when that traitor was born ! I beg 
you not to believe that on the soil of that State another 
such growth has ever deformed the face of nature and 
darkened the light of God's day. [An audible whisper, 
' Vallandigham.'] But, ah ! I am reminded that there 
are other such. My zeal and love for Ohio have carried 
me too far. I retract. I remember that only a few days 
since a political convention met at the capital of my 
State, and almost decided to select from just such ma- 
terial a representative for the Democratic party in the 
coming contest ; and to-day what claim to be a mnjority 
of the Democracy of that State say they have been 
cheated, or they would have made that choice. I, there- 
fore, sadly take back the boast I first uttered in behnlf of 
my native State. 

" But, sir, I will forget States. We have something 
greater than States and State pride to talk of here to- 
day. All personal or State feeling aside, I ask you 
what is the proposition which the enemy of his country 
has just made. What is it ? 

" For the first time in the history of this contest it is 
proposed in this hall, to give up the struggle, to abandon 
the war, and let treason run riot through the land ! I 
will, if I can, dismiss feeling from my heart, and try to 
consider only what bears upon the logic of the speech to 
which we have just listened. 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 127 

" First of all, the gentleman tells us that the right of 
secession is a constitutional right. I do not propose to 
enter into the argument. I have expressed myself hith- 
erto upon State rights and State sovereignty, of which 
this proposition of his is the legitimate child. 

" But the gentleman takes higher ground, and in that 
I agree with him — namely, that five million or eight mil- 
lion people possess the right of revolution. Grant it ; we 
agree there. If fifty-nine men can mjike revolution suc- 
cessful, they have the right of revolution. If one State 
wishes to break its connection with the Federal Govern- 
ment, and does it by force, maintaining itself, it is an in- 
dependent State. If the eleven Southern States are 
determined and resolved to leave the Union, to secede, to 
revolutionize, and can maintain that revolution by force, 
they have the revolutionary right to do so. Grant it. I 
stand on that platform with the gentleman. 

" And now the question comes, is it our constitutional 
duty to let them do it ? That is the question, and in 
order to reach it, I beg to call your attention, not to an 
argument, but to the condition of affairs which would re- 
sult from such action — the mere statement of which be- 
comes the strongest possible argument. What does the 
gentleman propose ? Where will he draw the line of 
division ? If the rebels carry into successful secession 
what they desire to carry; if their revolution envelops 
as many States as they intend it shall envelop ; if they 
draw the line where Isham G. Harris, the rebel Governor 
of Tennessee, in the rebel camp near our lines, told Mr. 
Vallandigham they would draw it, along the line of the 
Ohio and of the Potomac ; if they make good their state- 



128 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ment to him that they will never consent to any other 
line, then, I ask, what is this thing the gentleman pro- 
poses to do ? He proposes to leave the United States a 
territory reaching from .the Atlantic to the Pacific, and 
one hundred miles wide in the centre. From Wellsville, 
on the Ohio River, to Cleveland on the lakes is one hun- 
dred miles. I ask you, Mr. Chairman, if there he a man 
here so insane as to suppose that the American people 
will allow their magnificent proportions to be shorn to so 
deformed a shape as this ? 

" I tell you, and I confess it here, that while I hope 
I have something of human courage, I have not enough 
to contemplate such a result. I am not brave enough to 
go to the brink of the precipice of a successful secession, 
and look down into its damnable abyss. If my vision 
were keen enough to pierce its bottom, I would not dare 
to look. If there be a man here who dare contemplate 
such a scene, I look upon him either as the bravest of 
the sons of women, or as a downright madman. Secession 
to gain peace ! Secession is the tocsin of eternal war ! 
There can be no end to such a war as will be inaugurated 
if this thing be done. 

'* Suppose the policy of the gentleman were adopted 
to-day. Let the order go forth ! Sound the ' recall ' on 
your bugles, and let it ring forth from Texas to the far 
Atlantic, and tell the armies to come back. Call the 
victorious legions back over the battle-fields of blood, 
forever now disgraced. Call them back over the terri- 
tory which they have conquered. Call them back, and 
let the minions of secession chase them with derision and 
jeers as they come. And then tell them that that man 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 129 

across the aisle, from the free State of Ohio, gave birth to 
the monstrous proposition. 

" Mr. Chairman, if such a word should be sent forth 
through the armies of the Union, the wave of terrible 
vengeance that would sweep back over this land could 
never find a parallel in the records of history. Almost 
in the moment of final victory the 'recall' is sounded 
by a craven people not deserving freedom ! We ought, 
every man, to be made a slave, should we sanction such 
a sentiment. 

"The gentleman has told us there is no such thing 
as coercion justifiable under the constitution. I ask him 
for one moment to reflect that no statute was ever en-' 
forced without coercion. It is the basis of every law in 
the universe — God's law as well as man's. A law is no 
law without coercion behind it. When a man has mur- 
dered his brother, coercion takes the murderer, tries him, 
and hangs him. When you levy your taxes, coercion 
secures their collection. It follows the shadow of the 
thief, and brings him to justice ; it accompanies your di- 
plomacy to foreign courts, and backs the declaration 
of the nation's rights by a pledge of the nation s power. 
But when the life of that nation is imperilled, we are told 
that it has no coercive power against the paracides in its 
own bosom ! Again, he tells us that oaths taken under 
the Amnesty Proclamation are good for nothing. The 
oath of Galileo, he says, was not binding upon him. I 
am reminded of another oath that was taken ; but per- 
haps it too was an oath on the lips alone, to which the 
heart made no response, 

" I remember to have stood in a line of nineteen men 



130 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

from Ohio, on that carpet yonder, on the first day of 
the session, and I remember that, with uplifted hands, be- 
fore Almighty God, those nineteen took an oath to sup- 
port and maintain the Constitution of the United States. 
And I remember that another oath was passed around, 
and each member signed it as provided by law, utterly 
repudiating the Rebellion and its pretenses. Does the 
gentleman not blush to speak of Galileo's oath ? Was 
not his own its counterpart ? 

" He says the Union can never be restored because 
of the terrible hatred engendered by the war. To prove 
it he quoted what some Southern man said a few years 
ago, that he knew no hatred between peoples in the world 
like that between the North and the South. And yet 
that North and South have been one nation for eighty- 
eight years. 

" Have we seen in this contest anything more bitter 
than the wars of the Scottish Border? Have we seen 
anything bitterer than those terrible feuds in the days of 
Edward, when England and Scotland were the deadliest 
foes on earth ? And yet for centuries these countries 
have been cemented in an indissoluble union that has 
made the British nation one of the proudest of the earth ! 

" I said, a little while ago. that I accepted the propo- 
sition of the gentleman that the rebels had the right of 
revolution ; and the decisive issue between us and the 
Rebellion is, whether they shall revolutionize and de- 
stroy, or we shall subdue and preserve. We take the 
latter ground. We take the common weapons of war to 
meet them ; and if these be not sufficient I would take 
any element which will overwhelm and destroy. I would 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 131 

sacrifice the dearest and best beloved; I would take 
all the old sanctions of law and the constitution and 
fling them to the winds, if necessary, rather than let 
the nation be broken in pieces, and its people destroyed 
with endless ruin. 

" What is the constitution that these gentlemen per- 
petually fling in our faces whenever we desire to strike 
hard blows against the Rebellion ? It is the production 
of the American people. They made it, and the creator 
is mightier than the creature. The power which made 
the constitution can also make other instruments to do 
its great work in the day of its dire necessity." 

This speech, which was delivered on the spur of the 
moment in reply to an elaborately prepared argument, 
at once placed General Garfield in the front rank of 
Republican leaders, and from this time he ranked as one 
of the readiest and most brilliant Republican speakers. 
" This standing he never lost. It was, however, to 
prove in some respects injurious to his rising fame. 
He spoke so readily that members were constantly ask- 
ing his services in behalf of favored measures ; and in 
the impulsive eagerness of a young man and a young 
member, he often consented. He thus came to be too 
frequent -a speaker ; and by and by the House wearied 
a little of his polished periods and began to think him 
too fond of talking. After a time this little reaction in 
the general feeling of the House toward him wore off"." 
" His superior knowledge," says another writer, " used 
to ofi'end some of his less learned colleagues at first. 
They thought him bookish and pedantic until they 
found how solid and useful was his store of knowledge. 



132 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

and how pertinent to the business in hand were the 
drafts he made upon it. His genial personal ways soon 
made him many warm friends in Congress. The men of 
brains in botli houses and in the departments were not 
long in discovering that here was a fresh, strong intel- 
lectual force that was destined to make its mark upon 
the politics of the country. They sought his acquaint- 
ance, and before he had been long in Washington he 
had the advantage of the best society of the capital." 

In view of his long service in the popular House of 
Congress, and his certain elevation to the executive 
chair, General Garfield's views respecting the proper 
position of Congress in our system of government, its 
rights and duties, and its relations to the other branches 
of the Government, are of the greatest importance to his 
countrymen, and will be read by them with the deepest 
interest. He thus stated them in an article contributed 
by him to the "Atlantic Monthly " for July, 1877 : 

" We have seen the close of our memorial year, dur- 
ing which societies, the States, and the nation have been 
reviewing the completed century and forecasting the 
character of that which has just begun. 

" Our people have been tracing the footprints of the 
fathers along the many paths which united to form the 
great highway whereon forty millions of Americans are 
now marching. If we would profit by the great lessons 
of the centennial year, we must study thoughtfully and 
reverently the elements and forces that have made the 
Republic what it is, and which will in a great measure 
shape and direct its future. 

" No study of these themes can lead to a just view of 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 133 

. our institutions which does not include within its range a 
survey of the history and functions of 

THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. 

"Indeed, the history of liberty and union in this 
country, as developed by their successors, is inseparably 
connected with the history of the national legislature. 
Nor can they be separated in the future. The Union and 
Congress must share the same fate. They must rise or 
fall together. 

" The germ of our political institutions, the primary 
cell from which they were evolved, was the New England 
town ; and the vital force, the improving soul of the town 
was the town meeting, which for all local concerns was 
king, lords and commons in one. It was the training 
school in which our fathers learned the science and the 
art of self-government, the school which has made us the 
most parliamentary people on the globe. 

" In what other quarter of the world could such a 
phenomenon have been witnessed as the creation of the 
government of California in 1849, when out of the most 
heterogeneous and discordant elements a constitution and 
body of laws were formed and adopted which challenge 
comparison with those of the oldest governments in the 
world? This achievement was due to the law making 
habit of Americans. The spirit of the town meeting 
guided the colonies in their aspirations for independence, 
and finally created the Union. The Congress of the 
Union is the most general and comprehensive expression 
of this legislative habit of our people. 

" The materials for tracing the origin of Congress are 



134 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

scanty ; but they are sufficient to show the spirit which 
gave it birth. 

" The idea of a Congress on this continent sprang 
from the necessity of union among the colonies for mutual 
protection; and the desire for union logically expressed 
itself in an intercolonial representative assembly. Every 
such assembly in America has been a more or less marked 
symbol of union. 

AMERICAN UNION. 
" The first decisive act of union among the colonists 
was the convention of 1690, at New York. The revolu- 
tion of 1689 in England, resulted in immediate and des- 
perate war between that country and France, and soon 
involved the British and French colonies of America. 
The French of Canada, aided by the northern Indians, 
determined to carry the flag of Louis XIV. down the 
valley of the Hudson, and thus break in twain the British 
colonies. To meet this danger and to retaliate upon 
France, the General Court of Massachusetts, ever watch- 
ful of the welfare of its people, addressed letters of invi- 
tation to the neighboring colonies, asking them to appoint 
commissioners to meet and consult for the common de- 
fence. These commissioners met in convention, at New 
York, on the 1st of May, 1690, and determined to raise 
an " army " of eight hundred and fifty-five men, from the 
five colonies of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
Plymouth, and Maryland, to repel the threatened invasion 
and to capture Canada in the name of William and Mary.* 

* Doc. History of New Tork, vol. ii., page 339, and Bancroft's History, 
vol. iii., page IS'd. 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 135 

Some of our historians have called this meeting of com- 
missioners * the first American Congress.' I find no 
evidence that the name ^ Congress ' was then applied to 
that assembly; though it is doubtless true that its or- 
ganization and mode of procedure contained the germ of 
the future Congress. 

" The New York convention called upon each of the 
five colonies for its quota of troops for the little army, 
and intrusted the management of the campaign to a board 
or council of war consisting of one officer from each col- 
ony. The several quotas were proportioned to the popu- 
lation of tlie several colonies, while the great and small 
colonies had an equal voice in directing the expedition. 
Here, in embryo, was the duplex system of popular and 
State representation. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN" CONGRESS. 

" Sixty-four years later, a convention of commission- 
ers from seven of the colonies met at Albany and called 
themselves a ' Congress.' So far as I have been able to 
discover, this was the first American assembly which 
called itself by that name. It was [)robably adopted be- 
cause the convention bore some resemblance to that 
species of European international convention which in the 
language of diplomacy was called a congress. 

"In order to obtain a clearer view of this important 
Albany Congress of 1754, we must understand the events 
which immediately preceded it. 

"In 1748, in obedience to orders from England, the 
governors of the northern colonies met at Albany to con- 
clude a treaty of peace with the Six-Nations. After this 



136 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

was accomplished, the governors, sitting in secret coun- 
cil, united in a complaint that their salaries were not 
promptly and regularly paid, but that the colonial legisla- 
tures insisted upon the right to determine, by annual ap- 
propriations, the amounts to be paid. 

" This petition, forwarded to the dissolute Duke of 
Bedford, then at the head of the colonial administration, 
was answered by a royal order directing the governors to 
demand from the colonial legislatures the payment of 
fixed salaries for a term of years, and threatening that 
if this were not done. Parliament would impose upon the 
colonies a direct tax for that purpose. Thus the first 
overt act which led to the Revolution was a demand for 
higher salaries ; and, on the motion of the colonial gov- 
ernors at Albany, the British Board of Trade opened the 
debate in favor of parliamentary supremacy. Six years 
later came the reply from seven colonies through the 
Albany Congress of 1754. 

" War with France was again imminent. Her battal- 
ions had descended the Ohio, and were threatening the 
northern frontier. The colonial governors called upon 
the legislatures to send commissioners to Albany to se- 
cure the alliance of the Six-Nations against the French, 
and to adopt measures for the common defence. On the 
19th of June, 1754, twenty-five commissioners met at 
the little village of Albany, and, following the example of 
the governors who met there six years before, completed 
their treaty with the Indians, and then opened the ques- 
tion of a colonial union for common defence. 

" Foremost among the commissioners was Benjamin 
Franklin; and through his voice and pen the Congress 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 137 

and the colonies replied to the demands of England by 
proposing a plan of union to be founded upon the rights 
of the colonies as Englishmen. If his plan had been 
adopted, independence might have been delayed for half 
a century. Curiously enough, it was rejected by the 
colonies as having ' too much of the prerogative in it,' and 
by England as having ^ too much of the democratic.' 

"But the talismanic words 'Union' and 'Congress' 
had been spoken, and from that hour were never forgot- 
ten. The argument for colonial rights had also been 
stated in the perfect style of Franklin, and was never to 
be answered. 

THE CONGRESS OF 1765. 

" The second assembly which called itself a Congress 
met at New York in 1765. The mercantile policy of 
England, embodied in the long series of navigation acts, 
had finally culminated in Lord Grenville's stamp act and 
the general assertion of the right of Parliament to tax the 
colonies in all cases whatsoever. Again Massachusetts 
led the movement for union and resistance. On the 6th 
of June, 1765, her legislature adopted a resolution, of- 
fered by James Otis, to call a congress of delegates of 
the thirteen colonies, ' to consult together ' and ' consider 
of a united representation to implore relief.' This call 
was answered by every colony, and on the 7th of Octo- 
ber, 1765, twenty-seven delegates met at New York, and 
elected Timothy Ruggles, of Massachusetts, chairman. 

" There for the first time James Otis saw John Dick- 
inson; there Gadsden and Rutledge sat beside Livingston 
and Dyer ; there the brightest minds of America joined 



138 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

in the discussion of their common danger and common 
rights. The session lasted eighteen days. Its delibera- 
tions were most solemn and momentous. Loyalty to the 
crown and a shrinking dread of opposing established au- 
thority were met by the fiery spirit which glowed in the 
breasts of the boldest thinkers. Amidst the doubt and 
hesitation of the hour, John Adams gave voice to the 
logic and spirit of the crisis when he said, *You have 
rights antecedent to all earthly governments ; rights that 
cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws ; rights 
derived from the great Lawgiver of the universe.' 

" Before adjourning they drafted and adopted a series 
of masterly addresses to the king, to the Parliament, to 
the people of England, and to their brethren of the colo- 
nies. They had formulated the thoughts of the people, 
and given voice to their aspirations for liberty. That 
Congress was indeed ' the day-star of the Revolution ;' 
for though, most of its members were devotedly loyal to 
the crown, yet, as Bancroft has said, some, like James 
Otis, as they went away from that Congress, ' seemed to 
hear the prophetic song of the sibyls chanting the spring- 
time of a new empire.' 

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS OF 1774. 
"Nine more years of supplication and neglect, of 
ministerial madness and stubborn colonial resistance, 
bring us to the early autumn of 1774, when the Conti- 
nental Congress was assembling at Philadelphia. This 
time, the alarm had been sounded by New York, that a 
sister colony was being strangled by the heavy hand of a 
despotic ministry. The response was immediate and al- 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 139 

most unanimous. From eleven colonies came the fore- 
most spirits to take counsel for the common weal. From 
the assaulted colony came Samuel and John Adams, 
Gushing and Paine. They set out from Boston in Au- 
gust, escorted by great numbers as far as Watertown. 
Their journey was a solemn and triumphant march. The 
men of Hartford met them with pledges to ' abide by the 
resolves which Congress might adopt/ and accompanied 
them to Middletown with carriages and a cavalcade. The 
bells of New Haven welcomed them, and Roger Sherman 
addressed them. After visiting the grave of the regi- 
cide Bidwell, they left New Haven to be received at New 
York by the ' Sons of Liberty,' who attended them across 
the Hudson. Everywhere they were exhorted to be true 
to the honor of England and the liberties of America.* 

" With them, from New York and New England, came 
Jay and Livingston, Sherman and Deane, Hopkins and 
Duane. From the south came Washington and Henry, 
Randolph and Lee, Gadsden and Rutledge, and many 
other names now familiar ; in all fifty-five men, sent by 
eleven colonies. 

'' On Monday, the 5th of September, 1774, they met 
at Smith's Tavern, in Philadelphia, and proceeded in a 
body to the Hail of the Carpenters. With what dignity 
and solemnity they began their work! Choosing for 
president Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, and for secre- 
tary the gentle and learned Charles Thomson, the trans- 
lator of the Septuagint and the Greek Testament, they 
formally declared themselves 'the Congress,^ and their 
chairman 'the President.' And how soon the spii-it of 

* Bancroft, vol. vii., chaps. 8, 9. 



140 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

union, in the presence of a common danger, began to 
melt down the sharp differences of individual opinion ! 

" The first psalm and prayer to which that Congress 
listened sounded like a chapter of history and prophecy 
combined. The psalm was not selected for the occasion, 
but was a part of the regular Episcopal service for that 
day, the 7th of the month : ' Plead thou my cause, 
Lord, with them that strive with me, and fight thou 
against them that fight against me. Lay hand upon the 
shield and buckler, and stand up to help me. Bring forth 
the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute 
me. Let them be turned back and brought to confusion 
that imagine mischief for me. Let them be as the dust 
before the wind, and let the angel of the Lord scatter 
them.' When the minister had ended the formal service, 
the spirit of the occasion burst forth from his lips in these 
memorable words of prayer : ' Look down upon these 
American States who have fled to thee from the rod of 
the oppressor, and have thrown themselves on thy pre- 
cious protection, desiring to be henceforth dependent only 
on thee ; to thee they have appealed for the righteous- 
ness of their cause.' 

" What would we not give for a complete record of 
the proceedings of that Congress ! It sat with closed 
doors, with no reporters, and made no official record ex- 
cept the brief journal of motions and votes. To this 
journal, to private letters, and tradition, we are indebted 
for all we know of its proceedings. 

" The delegates were clothed with no legislative pow- 
ers. They could only consult and recommend. But 
they held higher commissions than any which can be em- 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 141 

bodied in formal credentials. It was their high duty to 
formulate the thoughts and express the aspirations of the 
New World. Yet no organized body of men ever direct- 
ed with more absolute sway the opinions and conduct of 
a nation. 

" As a reply to the Boston Port Bill, they requested 
all merchants and traders to send to Great Britain for no 
more goods until the sense of the Congress should be 
taken on the means for preserving the liberties of Amer- 
ica. And this request was at once complied with. 
Knowing that the conduct of England was inspired by 
greed, that she had adopted the shopkeepers' policy, 
Congress resolved that, after a given date, the colonies 
would not buy from England nor sell to her merchants 
any commodity whatever, unless before that date the 
grievances of America should be redressed. And public 
sentiment rigidly enforced the resolution. With more 
distinctness and solemnity than ever before, the cause of 
the colonists, based on the inalienable laws of nature and 
the principles of the English constitution, was declared in 
addresses to the king, to the Parliament, and to the peo- 
ple of America ; and, recommending that a new Congress 
be called the following spring, the Congress of 1774 ad- 
journed, without day, on the 14th of October. The most 
striking fact connected with that Congress is that its res- 
olutions were obeyed as though they had been clothed 
with all the sanctions of law. I doubt whether any law 
of Congress or of any State legislature has been so fully 
obeyed, in letter and spirit, as were the recommendations 
of the Continental Congress of 1774. But its action 
had been far from unanimous. There were strong men, 



142 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

like Jay, who were conservative by nature and culture, 
and who restrained the more fiery enthusiasm of Henry 
and Adams ; there were timid members who shrank 
from a contest with the royal authority ; and there were 
traitors to the cause, who, like Galloway, secured a seat 
that they might more elTectively serve the king as a 
royal spy. 

"The resolves of that Congress and its address to 
the colonies were potent educating forces which prepared 
the people for a great struggle. 

" Franklin was in England at that time, as the agent 
of the colonies, and presented the petitions of Congress. 
Parliament answered by declaring Massachusetts in re- 
bellion. The king replied by sending an army to Boston 
and by offering to protect all loyal Americans, but order- 
ing all others to be treated as traitors and rebels. 

THE CONGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION AND OF THE 
CONFEDERATION. 
"On the 10th of May, 1775, on the morning of the 
capture of Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen, the second 
Continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia. The 
conduct of the king and Parliament, and the events at 
Boston, Lexington, and Concord, had already demon- 
strated the impossibility of reconciliation. It is difficult 
to imagine a situation more perplexing and more peril- 
ous than that which confronted the fifty-four members 
of the Congress of 1775. Their jurisdiction and powers 
were vague and uncertain ; they were, in fact, only com- 
mittees from twelve colonies, deputed to consult upon 
measures of conciliation, but with no means of resistance 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 143 

to oppression beyond the voluntary agreement to sus- 
pend importations from Great Britain. " They formed no 
confederacy. They were not an executive government. 
They were not even a legislative body. They owed the 
•use of a hall for their "sessions to the courtesy of the 
carpenters of the city ; there was not a foot of land on 
which they had a right to execute their decisions, and 
they had not one civil officer to carry out their com- 
mands, nor the power to appoint one.' They had no 
army, no treasury, no authority to tax, no right but to 
give counsel. * They represented only the unformed 
opinion of an unformed people.' 

*' Yet that body was to undertake the great argument 
of reason with the foremost statesmen of Europe, and the 
greater argument of war with the first military power of 
the world. That Congress was to consolidate the vast 
and varied interests of a continent, express the will and 
opinion of three millions of people, and, amid the wreck 
and chaos of ruined colonial governments, rear the solid 
superstructure of a great republic. Strange as it now 
seems to us, timidity and conservatism controlled its ac- 
tion for nearly a year. The tie of affection that bound 
the colonists to England was too strong to be rudely sev- 
ered. They deluded themselves by believing that while 
the tory party was their enemy, England was still their 
friend. Though their petition had been spurned with 
contempt, yet they postponed the most pressing neces- 
sities of the time in order to send a second humble pe- 
tition and await an answer. After all, this delay was 
wise ; the slow process of growth was going forward 
and could not be hastened. It was necessary that all 



144 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

thoughtful men should see the hopelessness of reconcilia- 
tion. It was necessary that the Dickinsons and the Jays 
should be satisfied. In the meantime, Congress was not 
idle ; it was laying the foundation of the structure soon 
to be reared. In its proceedings, we find the origin of 
many customs which still prevail. On the 15th of May, 
1775, it was ordered ' that this body will to-morrow re- 
solve itself into a committee of the whole, to take into 
consideration the state of America." This formula, 
modified only by the change of a single word, still de- 
scribes the act by which each branch of our Congress 
resolves itself into *a committee of the whole on the 
state of the Union.' 

" On the 31st of May, 1775, on motion of Dr. Frank- 
lin, a committee was appointed to provide for 'estab- 
lishing post for conveying letters and intelligence through 
the continent.' Franklin was made chairman of the 
committee, and thus became, in fact, the first postmaster- 
general of the United States. 

" By resolution of June 14, 1775, Washington was 
made the chairman of our first committee on military 
affairs. 

"On the 27th of May, 1775, it was resolved that 
Mr. Washington, Mr. Schuyler, Mr. Mifflin, Mr. Deane, 
and Mr. Samuel Adams be a committee to consider of 
ways and means to supply these colonies with ammu- 
nition and military stores. Thus Washington was the 
chairman of our first committee of ways and means. 

*' While Congress was waiting for the king's answer 
to its second petition, Franklin revived the 'plan of 
union' which he had suggested twenty-one years before, 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 145 

at the Albany Congress, and which finally, with a few 
changes, became the Articles of Confederation. 

" It was not until the spring of 1776 that the action 
of the British Government destroyed all hopes of recon- 
ciliation ; and when, at List, the great declaration was 
adopted, both the colonies and the Congress saw that 
their only safety lay in the boldest measures. By the 
Declaration of Independence, the sovereignty of the col- 
onies was withdrawn from the British crown and lodged 
in the Continental Congress. No one of the colonies 
was ever independent or sovereign. No one colony de- 
clared itself independent of Great Britain; nor was the 
declaration made by all the colonies together as colo- 
nies.* It was made in the name and by the authority 
of the good people of the colonies as one nation. By 
that act they created, not independent States, but an in- 
dependent nation, ^,nd named it ' The United States of 
America ;' and, by the consent of the people, the sover- 
eignty of the new nation was lodged in the Continental 
Congress. This is true, not only in point of law, but as- 
a historical fact. The Congress became the only legis- 
lative, executive, and judicial power of the nation ; the 
army became the army of the Continental Congress, One 
of its regiments, which was recruited from the nation- 
generally, was called, ' Congress's Own,' as a sort of reply 
to the ' King's Own,' a royal regiment stationed at Bos- 
ton. Officers were commissioned by Congress, and were 
sworn to obey its orders. The president of Congress 
was the chief executive officer of the nation. The chair- 
men of committees were heads of the executive depart- 

* Von Hoist's " Constitutional History of the United States," page 6. 
10 



146 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ments. A committee sat as judges in admiralty and ' 
prize cases. The power of Congress was unlimited by 
any law or regulation, except the consent of the people 
themselves. 

"On the first day of March, 1781, the Articles of 
Confederation, drafted by Congress, became the law of 
the land. But the functions of Congress were so slightly 
changed that we may say, with almost literal truth, that 
the Continental Congress which met on the 10th of May, 
1775, continued unchanged in its character, and held an 
almost continuous session for thirteen years. 

" ' History knows few bodies so remarkable. The 
Long Parliament of Charles I. and the French National 
Assembly of the last century are alone to be compared 
with it.' Strange as it may appear, the acts of the Con- 
tinental Congress which finally brought most disaster to 
the people, were those which gave to Congress its chief 
power. With no authority to levy direct taxes. Congress 
had but one resource for raising revenue : forced loans, 
in the form of bills of credit. And, so long as the Con- 
tinental money maintained a reasonable share of credit. 
Congress was powerful. It was able to pa}^ its army, 
its officers, and its agents, and thus to tide over the most 
difficult period of the Revolution. 

" Great and conspicuous as were the services of the 
Continental Congress, it did not escape the fate which has 
pursued its successors. Jealousy of its power was mani- 
fested in a thousand ways ; and the epithet " King Cong" 
was the byword of reproach during the latter half of the 
war. The people could not hear with patience that the 
members of Congress were living in comfort while the 



GENEK-U. GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 147 

soldiers were starving and freezing at Valley Forge. 
They accused Congress of weakness, indecision, and de- 
lay ; of withholding its full confidence from Washington ; 
and finally of plotting to supersede him by assigning an 
ambitious rival to his place. It is no doubt true that 
some intriguing members favored this disgraceful and 
treacherous design ; but they would not have been repre- 
sentative men if all had been patriots and sages. 

"The Continental Congress was a migratory body, 
compelled sometimes to retire before the advance of the 
British army, and sometimes to escape the violence of 
the mob who assaulted its doors and demanded appro- 
priations. Beginning its session in Philadelphia, it took 
refuge in Baltimore before the end of 1776. Later, it 
returned to Philadelphia ; went thence to Lancaster ; 
thence to York ; then again to Philadelphia ; thence, in 
succession, to Princeton, to Annapolis, and to Trenton ; 
and finally terminated its career in the city of New York. 

" The estimation in which that Congress was held is 
the best gauge by which to judge of the strength and 
weakness of our government under the confederation. 
While the inspiration of the war fired the hearts of the 
people. Congress was powerful ; but when the victory 
was won, and the long arrears of debts and claims came 
up for payment, the power of Congress began to wane. 
Smitten with the curse of poverty and the greater curse 
of depreciated paper money, loaded with debts they could 
not pay, living as " pensioners on the bounty of France, 
insulted and scouted at by the public creditors, unable to 
fulfil the treaties they had made, bearded and encroached 
upon by the State authorities, finally begging for addi- 



148 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

tional authority which the States refused to grant, thrown 
more and more into the shade by the very contrast of 
former power, the Continental Congress sank fast into 
decrepitude and contempt."* 

" During the last three or four years of its existence, 
few men of first-class abilities were willing to serve as 
members. It was difficult to secure the attendance of 
those who were elected; and when a quorum was ob- 
tained, it was impossible, under the articles of confedera- 
tion, to accomplish any worthy work. Even after the 
^adoption of the new constitution, the old Congress was 
so feeble that for many months it was doubtful whether 
it had enough vitality left to pass the necessary ordi- 
nance appointing the day for the presidential election and 
the day for putting the new government in motion. 

" With a narrowness and selfishness almost incredible, 
the old Congress wrangled and debated and disagreed for 
weeks and months before they could determine where 
the new government should find its temporary seat. 

" It is sad to reflect that a body whose early record 
was so glorious should be doomed to drag out a feeble 
existence for many months, and expire at last without 
a sign, with not even the power to announce its own dis- 
solution. 

" I have always regarded our national constitution as 
the most remarkable achievement in the history of legis- 
lation. As the weakness of the old confederation became 
more apparent, the power of the separate States became 
greater, and the difficulties of union were correspondingly 
increased. It needed all the appreciation of common 

* Hildreth, vol. iii., page 547. 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 149 

danger, springing from such popular tumults as Shay's 
Rebellion, all the foreign complications that grew out of 
the weakness of the confederation, and finally, all the 
authority of the fathers of the Revolution, with Washing- 
ton at their head, to frame the constitution and to secure 
its adoption. We are apt to forget how near our govern- 
ment was brought to the verge of chaos, and to forget by 
how small a vote the constitution was adopted in many 
of the States. Only in Delaware, New Jersey, and 
Georgia was the vote unanimous. Even Massachusetts 
gave it but a majority of nineteen out of a vote of three 
hundred and fifty-six. In Virginia it received but ten 
majority, in New Hampshire eleven, and in Pennsylvania 
twenty-three. These votes disclose the strength of the 
political parties, federal and anti-federal, to which the 
constitution gave birth. This brings us to 

THE CONGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTION, 
which began its first session at New York, on the 4th of 
March, 1789. 

" Fears were entertained that some of the States 
might neglect or refuse to elect senators and representa- 
tives. Three States had hitherto refused to adopt the 
constitution. More than a month passed before a quorum 
of the Senate and House appeared in New York ; but on 
the 6th of April, 1789, a quorum of both houses met in 
joint session and witnessed the opening and counting of 
the votes for President and Vice-President by John Lang- 
don. Having dispatched the venerable Charles Thomson, 
late secretary of the old Congress, to Mount Vernon, to 
inform Washington of his election, the new Congress 



150 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

addressed itself to the great work required by the consti- 
tution. The three sessions of the first Congress lasted 
in the aggregate five hundred and nineteen days, exceed- 
ing by more than fifty days the sessions of any subse- 
quent Congress. It was the high duty of this body to 
interpret the powers conferred upon it by the constitu- 
tion, and to put in motion not only the machinery of the 
Senate and House, but the more complex machinery of 
the executive and judicial departments. 

" It is worth while to observe with what largeness of 
comprehension and minuteness of detail the members of 
that Congress studied the problems before them. While 
Washington was making his way from Mount Vernon to 
New York, they were determining with what ceremonials 
he should be received, and with what formalities the in- 
tercourse between the President and the Congress should 
be conducted. A joint committee of both houses met 
him on the Jersey shore, in a richly furnished barge, and 
landing at the Battery, escorted him to the residence 
which Congress had prepared and furnished for his recep- 
tion. Then came the question of the title by which he 
should be addressed. The Senate insisted that ' a decent 
respect for the opinion and practice of civilized nations 
required a special title,' and proposed that the Presi- 
dent should be addressed as ' His Highness the Presi- 
dent of the United States of America, and Protector of 
their Liberties.' At the earnest remonstrance of the more 
Republican house, the Senate gave way, and finally agreed 
that he should be addressed simply as ' the President of 
the United States.' 

" It was determined that the President should, in per- 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 151 

son, deliver his ' annual speech,' as it was then called, to 
the two houses in joint session; and that each house 
should adopt an address in reply, to be delivered to the 
President at his official residence. 

^' These formalities were manifestly borrowed from 
the practice of the British Parliament, and were main- 
tained until near the close of Jefferson's administration. 

" Communications from the executive departments 
were also to be made to the two houses by the heads of 
those departments in person. This custom was unfor- 
tunately swept away by the Republican reaction which 
set in a few years later. 

"Among questions of ceremony were also the rules 
by which the President should regulate his social rela- 
tions to citizens. Washington addressed a long letter of 
inquiry to John Adams, and to several other leading 
statesmen of that time, asking their advice on this sub- 
ject. The inquiry resulted in the conclusion that the 
President should be under no obligation to make or re- 
turn any social call; but regular dfiys were appointed, 
on which the President should hold levees and thus 
maintain social intercourse with his fellow-citizens. At 
these assemblages the President and Mrs. Washington 
occupied an elevated dais, and introductory ceremonies 
of obeisance and salutation were carefully prescribed. 

" Not less curious, as indicating the spirit of that 
time, were the formalities of intercourse between the 
two branches of Congress. When a communication was 
sent from one house to the other, the messenger was 
required to make his obeisance as he entered the bar, 
a second as he delivered his message to the presiding 



152 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

officer, a third after its delivery, and a final obeisance as 
he retired from the hall. It was much debated whether 
the members of each house should remain standing while 
a communication was being delivered from the other. 
These formalities were subsequently much abridged, 
though traces of them still remain. 

" In adopting its rules of procedure, the House pro- 
vided, among other things, that the sergeant-at-arms 
should procure a proper symbol of his office, of such 
form and device as the speaker should direct, to be 
placed on the table during the sitting of the House, but 
under the table when the House is in committee of the 
whole ; said symbol to be borne by the sergeant-at-arms 
when executing the commands of the House during its 
sitting. This symbol, now called the speaker's mace, 
modelled after the Roman fasces, is a bundle of ebony 
rods, fastened with silver bands, having at its top a 
silver globe surmounted by a silver eagle. In the red- 
republican period of Jefferson's administration, an at- 
tempt was made to banish the mace ; and a zealous 
economist in the House of Representatives proposed to 
melt down and coin its silver, and convert the proceeds 
into the treasury. The motion Mled, however, and the 
mace still holds its place at the right hand of the 
speaker, when the House is in session. 

" The House conducted its proceedings with open 
doors; but the Senate, following the example of the 
Continental Congress, held all sessions in secret until 
near the end of the second Congress. Since then its 
doors have been closed during executive sessions only. 

" It is greatly to the credit of the eminent men who 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 153 

sat in the first Congress that they deliberated long and 
carefully before they completed any work of legislation. 
They had been in session four months when their first 
bill, * relating to the time and manner of administering 
certain oaths/ became a law. Then followed in quick 
succession the great statutes of the session: to provide 
a revenue to fill the empty treasury of the nation; to 
create the department of the treasury, the department of 
foreign affairs, the department of war ; to create an 
army ; to regulate commerce ; to establish the govern- 
ment of our vast territory ; and, that monument of ju- 
ridical learning, the act to establish the judiciary of the 
United States. 

"I must not omit from this summary the ninth 
statute in the order of time, the Sact for the establish- 
ment and support of light-houses, beacons, buoys, and 
public piers.' As an example of broad-minded states- 
manship on the subject, that statute stands alone in the 
legislative history of the last century. Everywhere else 
the commerce of the ocean was annoyed and obstructed 
by unjust and vexatious light-house charges. But our 
first Congress, in a brief statute of four sections, provided 
Uhat from the 15th day of August, 1789, all the light- 
houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers of the United 
States shall be maintained at the expense of the national 
treasury.' From that date the lights of our coast have 
shone free as the sunlight for all the ships of the world. 

" Great as were the merits of that first Congress, it 
was not free from many of the blemishes which have 
clouded the fame of its successors. It dampens not a 
little our enthusiasm for the * superior virtues of the 



154 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

fathers,' to learn that Hamilton's monument of statesman- 
ship, the funding bill, which gave life to the public credit 
and saved from dishonor the war debts of the States, was 
for a time hopelessly defeated by the votes of one sec- 
tion of the Union, and was carried at last by a legisla- 
tive bargain, which in the mildest slang of our day 
would be called a ' log-rolling job.' The bill fixing the 
permanent seat of the government on the banks of the 
Potomac was the argument which turned the scale and 
carried the funding bill. The bargain carried them both 
through. Nor were demagogues of the smaller type un- 
known among our fathers. For example, when a joint 
resolution was pending in the house of the first Con- 
gress to supply each member at the public expense with 
copies of all the newspapers published in New York, 
an amendment was offered to restrict the supply to one 
paper for each member, the preamble declaring that 
this appropriation was made 'because newspapers, be- 
ing highly beneficial in disseminating useful knowledge, 
are deserving of public encouragement by Congress.' 
That is, the appropriation was not to be made for the 
benefit of members, but to aid and encourage the press ! 
The proprietors of our great dailies would smile at this 
patriotic regard for their prosperity. It is scarcely ne- 
cessary to add that the original resolution passed with- 
out the amendment. 

" Whatever opinions we may now entertain of the 
federalists as a party, it is unquestionably true that we 
are indebted to them for the strong points of the con- 
stitution, and for the stable government they founded 
and strengthened during the administrations of Washing- 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 155 

ton and Adams. Hardly a month passed, during that 
period, in which threats of disunion were not made with 
more or less vehemence and emphasis. But the founda- 
tions of national union and prosperity had been so wisely 
and deeply laid that succeeding revolutions of public 
opinion failed to destroy them. 

" With the administration of Jefferson came the re- 
action against the formal customs and stately manners of 
the founders. That skilful and accomplished leader of 
men, who had planted the germ of secession in the reso- 
lutions of 1798, brought to his administration the aid of 
those simple, democratic manners which were so effec- 
tual in deepening the false impression that the preceding 
administration had sought to establish a monarchy. 

*' In delivering his inaugural, Jefferson appeared be- 
fore Congress in the plainest attire. Discarding the 
plush breeches, silk stockings, and silver knee-buckles, 
he wore plain pantaloons ; and his Republican admirers 
noted the fact that no aristocratic shoe-buckles covered 
his instep, but his plain American shoes were fastened 
with honest leather strings. The carriage and footmen, 
with outriders in livery, disappeared ; and the spectacle 
of the President on horseback was hailed as the certain 
sign of Republican equality. These changes were noted 
by his admirers as striking proofs of his democratic 
spirit ; but they did not escape the equally extravagant 
and absurd criticism of his enemies. Mr. Goodrich has 
preserved an anecdote which illustrates the absurdity of 
both parties. Near the close of Jefferson's term, the 
congressional caucus had named Mr. Madison for the 
president. The leading barber of Washington (who was 



156 JAMES A. GAKFIELD. 

of course a federalist) while shaving a federalist senator, 
vehemently burst out in this strain : 

" ' Surely this country is doomed to disgrace and 
shame. What presidents we might have, sir! Just 
look at Daggett, of Connecticut, and Stockton, of New 
Jersey ! What queues they have got, sir — as big as 
your wrist, and powdered every day, sir, like real gen- 
tlemen as they are. Such men, sir, would confer dig- 
nity upon the chief magistracy ; but this little Jim 
Madison, with a queue no bigger than a pipe-stem ! 
Sir, it is enough to make a man forswear his country ! ' 

" Many customs of that early time have been pre- 
served to our own day. In the crypt constructed under 
the dome of the Capitol, as the resting-place for the re- 
mains of Washington, a guard was stationed, and a light 
was kept burning for more than half a century. Indeed, 
the office of keeper of the crypt was not abolished until 
after the late war. 

" For the convenience of one of the early speakers of 
the House, an urn filled with snuff was fastened to the 
speaker's desk : and until last year, I have never known 
it to be empty during the session of the House. 

" The administration of Madison, notwithstanding the 
gloomy prediction of the federalist barber, restored some 
of the earlier customs. It had been hinted that a car- 
riage was more necessary to him than to the widower 
Jefferson. Assisted by his beautiful and accomplished 
wife, he resumed the presidential levees ; and many so- 
ciety people regretted that the elevated dais was not re- 
stored, to aid in setting off the small stature of Mr. Madi- 
son. 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 157 

" The limits of this article \Yill not allow me to notice 
the changes of manners and methods in Congress since 
the administration of the elder Adams. Such a review 
would bring before us many striking characters and many 
stirring scenes. We should find the rage of party spirit 
pursuing Washington to his voluntary retreat at Mount 
Vernon at the close of his term, and denouncing him as 
the corrupt and wicked destroyer of his country. We 
should find the same spirit publicly denouncing a chief- 
justice of the United States as a ' driveller and a fool,' 
and impeaching, at the bar of the Senate, an eminent as- 
sociate justice of the supreme court for having manfully 
and courageously discharged the high duties of his office 
in defiance of the party passions of the hour. We should 
see the pure and patriotic Oliver Wolcott, the secretary 
of the treasury, falsely charged, by a committee of Con- 
gress, with corruption in office and with the monstrous 
crime of having set on fire the public buildings for the 
purpose of destroying the evidences of his guilt. We 
should see the two houses in joint session witnessing the 
opening of the returns of the electoral colleges and the 
declaration of a tie vote between Thomas Jefferson and 
Aaron Burr; and then, in the midst of the fiercest excite- 
ment, we should see the House of Representatives in con- 
tinuous session for eight days, several members in the 
last stages of illness being brought in on beds and at- 
tended b^ their wives, while the ballotings went on 
which resulted in Jefferson's election. And we should 
witness a similar scene, twenty-four years later, when the 
election of the younger Adams by the House, avenged in 
part the wrong of his father. 



158 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

*'' In the long line of those who have occupied seats 
in Congress, we should see, here and there, rising above 
the undistinguished mass, the figures of those great men 
whose lives and labors have made their country illustri- 
ous, and whose influence upon its destiny will be felt for 
ages to come. We should see that group of great states- 
men whom the last war with England brought to public 
notice, among whom were Ames and Randolph, Clay and 
Webster, Calhoun and Benton, Wright and Prentiss, mak- 
ing their era famous by their statesmanship, and creating 
and destroying political parties by their fierce antago- 
nisms. We should see the folly and barbarism of the 
^o-called code of honor destroying noblemen in the fatal 
meadow of Bladensburg. We should see the spirit of 
liberty awaking the conscience of the nation to the sin 
and danger of slavery, whose advocates had inherited 
and kept alive the old anarchic spirit of disunion. We 
should trace the progress of that great struggle from the 
days when John Quincy Adams stood in the House of 
Representatives, like a lion at bay, defending the sacred 
right of petition ; when, after his death, Joshua R. Gid- 
dings continued the good fight, standing at this post for 
twenty years, his white locks, like the plume of Henry 
of Navarre, always showing where the battle for freedom 
raged most fiercely ; when his small band in Congress, 
re-enforced by Hale and Sumner, Wade and Chase, Love- 
joy and Stevens, continued the struggle amid the most 
turbulent scenes; when daggers were brandished and 
pistols were drawn in the halls of Congress ; and later, 
when, one by one, the senators and representatives of 
eleven States, breathing defiance and uttering maledic- 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 159 

tions upon the Union, resigned their seats and left the 
Capitol to take up arms against their country. We 
should see the Congress of a people long unused to war, 
when confronted by a supreme danger, raising, equipping, 
and supporting an army greater than all the armies of 
Napoleon and Wellington combined ; meeting the most 
difficult questions of international and constitutional law; 
and, by new forms of taxation, raising a revenue which, 
in one year of the war, amounted to more than all the 
national taxes collected during the first half century of 
the government. We should see them so amending the 
constitution as to strengthen the safeguards of the Union 
and insure universal liberty and universal suffrnge, and 
restoring to their places in the Union the eleven States 
whose governments, founded on secession, fell into instant 
ruin when the Rebellion collapsed ; and we should see 
them, even when the danger of destruction seemed great- 
est, voting the largest sum of money ever appropriated 
by one act, to unite the East and the West, the Atlantic 
and the Pacific coasts, by a material bond of social, com- 
mercial, and political union. 

" In this review we should see courage and coward- 
ice, patriotism and selfishness, far-sighted wisdom and 
short-sighted folly, joining in a struggle always desperate 
and sometimes doubtful ; and yet, out of all this turmoil 
and fierce strife we should see the Union slowly but 
surely rising, with greater strength and brighter lustre, 
to a higher place among the nations. 

" Congress has always been and must always be the 
theatre of contending opinions ; the forum where the op- 
posing forces of political philosophy meet to measure their 



160 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

strength ; where the public good must meet the assaults 
of local and sectional interests ; in a word, the appointed 
place where the nation seeks to utter its thought and 
register its will. 

CONGRESS AND THE EXECUTIVE. 

" This brings me to consider the present relations of 
Congress to the other great departments of the govern- 
ment, and to the people. The limits of this article will 
permit no more than a glance at a few principal heads 
of inquiry. 

" In the main, the balance of powers so admirably ad- 
justed and distributed among the three great depart- 
ments of the government have been safely preserved. It 
was the purpose of our fathers to lodge absolute power 
nowhere ; to leave each department independent within 
its own sphere ; yet, in every case, responsible for the 
exercise of its discretion. But some dangerous innova- 
tions have been made. 

" And first, the appointing power of the President has 
been seriously encroached upon by Congress, or rather 
by the members of Congress. Curiously enough, this 
encroachment originated in the act of the chief executive 
himself. The fierce popular hatred of the federal party, 
which resulted in the elevation of Jefferson to the presi- 
dency, led that officer to set the first example of remov- 
ing men from office on account of political opinions. For 
political causes alone he removed a considerable number 
of officers who had recently been appointed by President 
Adams, and thus set the pernicious example. His imme- 
diate successors made only a few removals for political 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 161 

reasons. But Jackson made his political opponents who 
were in office feel the full weight of his executive hand. 
From that time forward the civil offices of the govern- 
ment became the prizes for which political parties strove ; 
and, twenty-five years ago, the corrupting doctrine that 
' to the victors belong the spoils ' was shamelessly an- 
nounced as an article of political faith and practice. It 
is hardly possible to state with adequate force the nox- 
ious influence of this doctrine. It was bad enough when 
the federal officers numbered no more than eight or ten 
thousand ; but now, when the growth of the country aiid 
the great increase in the number of public offices occa- 
sioned by the late war, have swelled the civil list to more 
than eighty thousand, and to the ordinary motives for 
political strife this vast patronage is offered as a reward 
to the victorious party, the magnitude of the evil can 
hardly be measured. The public mind has, by degrees, 
drifted into an acceptance of this doctrine ; and thus an 
election has become a fierce, selfish struggle between the 
* ins ' and the ' outs,' the one striving to keep and the 
other to gain the prize of office. It is not possible for 
any president to select, with any degree of intelligence, 
so vast an army of office-holders without the aid of men 
who are acquainted with the people of the various sec- 
tions of the country. And thus it has become the habit 
of presidents to make most of their appointments on the 
recommendation of members of Congress. During the 
last twenty-five years, it has been understood, by the 
Congress and the people, that offices are to be obtained 
by the aid of senators and representatives, who thus be- 
come the dispensers, sometimes the brokers of patronage. 
11 



162 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

The members of State legislatures who choose a senator, 
and the district electors who choose a representative, 
look to the man of their choice for appointments to office. 
Thus, from the President downward, through all the 
grades of official authority, to the electors themselves, 
civil office becomes a vast corrupting power, to be used 
in running the machine of party politics. 

" This evil has been greatly aggravated by the pas- 
sage of the Tenure of Office Act, of 1867, whose object 
was to restrain President Johnson from making removals 
for political cause. But it has virtually resulted in the 
usurpation, by the Senate, of a large share of the ap- 
pointing power. The President can remove no officer 
without the consent of the Senate ; and such consent is 
not often given, unless the appointment of the successor 
nominated to fill the proposed vacancy is agreeable to the 
senator in whose State the appointee resides. Thus, it 
has happened that a policy, inaugurated by an early 
president, has resulted in seriously crippling the just 
powers of the executive, and has phiced in the hands of 
senators and representatives a power most corrupting and 
dangerous. 

" Not the least serious evil resulting from this inva- 
sion of the executive functions by members of Congress 
is the fact that it greatly impairs their own usefulness as 
legislators. One-third of the working hours of senators 
and representatives is hardly sufficient to meet the de- 
mands made upon them in reference to appointments to 
office. The spirit of that clause of the constitution which 
shields them from arrest ' during their attendance on the 
session of their respective houses, and in going to and 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 163 

from the same/ should also shield them from being ar- 
rested from their legislative work, morning, noon, and 
night, by office-seekers. To, sum up in a word : the 
present system invades the independence of the execu- 
tive, and makes him less responsible for the character of 
his appointments ; it impairs the efficiencj^ of the legis- 
lator by diverting him from his proper sphere of duty 
and involving him in the intrigues of aspirants for office ; 
it degrades the civil service itself by destroying the per- 
sonal independence of those who are appointed ; it repels 
from the service those high and manly qualities which are 
so necessary to a pure and efficient administration; and 
finally, it debauches the public mind by holding up public 
office as the reward of mere party zeal. 

" To reform this service is one of the highest and most 
imperative duties of statesmanship. This reform cannot 
be accomplished without a complete divorce between 
Congress and the executive in the matter of appoint- 
ments. It will be a proud day when an administration 
senator or representative, who is in good standing in his 
party, can say as Thomas Hughes said, during his recent 
visit to this country, that though he was on the most in- 
timate terms with the members of his own administration, 
yet it Was not in his power to secure the removal of the 
hum.blest clerk in the civil service of his government. 

" This is not the occasion to discuss the recent en- 
largement of the jurisdiction of Congress in reference to 
the election of a president and vice-president by the 
States. But it cannot be denied that the electoral bill 
has spread a wide and dangerous field for congressional 
action. Unless the boundaries of its power shall be re- 



1G4 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

stricted by a new amendment of the constitution, we have 
seen the last of onr elections of president on the old plan. 
The power to decide who has been elected may be so used 
as to exceed the power of electing. 

" I have long believed that the official relations be- 
tween the executive and Congress should be more open 
and direct. They are now conducted by correspondence 
with the presiding officers of the two houses, by consul- 
tation with committees, or by private interviews with in- 
dividual members. This frequently leads to misunder- 
standings, and may lead to corrupt combinations. It 
would be far better for both departments if the members 
of the cabinet were permitted to sit in Congress and par- 
ticipate in the debates on measures relating to their sev- 
eral departments — but, of course, without a vote. This 
would tend to secure the ablest men for the chief execu- 
tive offices ; it would bring the policy of the adminis- 
tration into the fullest publicity by giving both parties 
ample opportunity for criticism and defence. 

CONGRESS OVERBURDENED. 
" As a result of the great growth of the country and 
of the new legislation arising from the late war, Congress 
is greatly overloaded with work. It is safe to say that 
the business which now annually claims the attention of 
Congress is tenfold more complex and burdensome than 
it was forty years ago. For example : the twelve annual 
appropriation bills, with their numerous details, now con- 
sume two-thirds of each short session of the House. 
Forty years ago, when the appropriations were made more 
in block, one week was sufficient for the work. The vast 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 165 

extent of our country, the increasing number of States 
and Territories, the legislation necessary to regulate our 
mineral lands, to manage our complex systems of internal 
revenue, banking, currency, and expenditure, have so in- 
creased the work of Congress that no one man can ever 
read the bills and the official reports relating to current 
legislation ; much less can he qualify himself for intelli- 
gent action upon them. As a necessary consequence, the 
real work of legislation is done by the committees ; and 
their work must be accepted or rejected without full 
knowledge of its merits. This fact nlone renders leader- 
ship in Congress, in the old sense of the word, impossible. 
For many years we have had the leadership of commit- 
tees and chairmen of committees ; but no one man can 
any more be the leader of all the legislation of the Senate 
or of the House, than one lawyer or one physician can 
now be foremost in all the departments of law or medi- 
cine. The evils of loose legislation resulting from this 
situation must increase rather than diminish, until a 
remedy is provided. 

" John Stuart Mill held that a numerous popular as- 
sembly is radically unfit to malce good latvs, but is the best 
possible means of getting good lazvs made. He suggested, 
as a permanent part of the constitution of a free country, 
a legislative commission, composed of a few trained men, 
to draft such laws as the legislature, by general resolu- 
tions, shall direct, which draft shall be adopted by the 
legislature, without change, or returned to the commis- 
sion to be amended.* 

" Whatever may be thought of Mr. Mill's suggestion, 

* Mill's Autobiography, pp. 26-45. 



166 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

it is clear that some plan must be adopted to relieve Con- 
gress from the infinite details of legislation, and to pre- 
serve harmony and coherence in our laws. 

" Another change observable in Congress, as well as 
in the legislatures of other countries, is the decline of ora- 
tory. The press is rendering the orator obsolete. Sta- 
tistics now furnish the materials upon which the legislator 
depends ; and a column of figures will often demolish a 
dozen pages of eloquent rhetoric. 

" Just now, too, the day of sentimental politics is pass- 
ing away, and the work of Congress is more nearly allied 
to the business interests of the country and to * the dis- 
mal science,' as political economy is called by the * prac- 
tical men ' of our time. 

CONGRESS AND THE PEOPLE. 

" The legislation of Congress comes much nearer to 
the daily life of the people than ever before. Twenty 
years ago, the presence of the national government was 
not felt by one citizen in a hundred. Except in paying 
his postage and receiving his mail, the citizen of the inte- 
rior rarely came in contact with the national authority. 
Now, he meets it in a thousand ways. Formerly the 
legislation of Congress referred chiefly to our foreign re- 
lations, to indirect taxes, to the government of the army, 
the navy, and the Territories. Now a vote in Congress 
may, any day, seriously derange the business affairs- of 
every citizen. 

"And this leads me to say, that now, more than ever 
before, the people are responsible for the character of 
their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 167 

corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance,, reck- 
lessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and 
pure, it is because the people demand those high quali- 
ties to represent them in the national legislature. Con- 
gress lives in the blaze of ' that fierce light which beats 
against the throne.' The telegraph and the press will 
to-morrow morning announce at a million breakfast tables 
what has been said and done in Congress to-day. Now, 
as always. Congress represents the prevailing opinions 
and political aspirations of the people. The wildest de- 
lusions of paper money, the crudest theories of taxation, 
the passions and prejudices that find expression in the 
Senate and House, were first believed and discussed at 
the firesides of the people, on the corners of the streets, 
and in the caucuses and conventions of political parties. 

"The most alarming feature of our situation is the 
fact that so many citizens of high character and solid 
judgment pay but little attention to the sources of po- 
litical power, to the selection of those who shall make 
their laws. The clergy, the faculties of colleges, and 
many of the leading business men of the community, 
never attend the township caucus, the city primaries, or 
the county convention ; but they allow the less intelli- 
gent and the more selfish and corrupt members of the 
community to make the slates and *run the machine' 
of politics. They wait until the machine has done its 
work, and then, in surprise, and horror at the ignorance 
and corruption in public office, sigh for the return of that 
mythical period called the ' better and purer days of the 
republic' It is precisely this neglect of the first steps 
in our political processes that has made possible the 



168 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

wors^ evils of our system. Corrupt and incompetent 
presidents, judges, and legislators can be removed, but 
when the fountains of political power are corrupted, when 
voters themselves become venial and elections fraudu- 
lent, there is no remedy except by awakening the pub- 
lic conscience, and bringing to bear upon the subject the 
power of public opinion and the penalties of the law. 
The practice of buying and selling votes at our popular 
elections has already gained a foothold, though it has 
not gone as far as in England. 

" It is mentioned in the recent biography of Lord 
Macaulay, as a boast, that his three elections to the 
House of Commons cost him but ten thousand dollars. 
A hundred years ago, bribery of electors was far more 
prevalent and shameless in England than it now is. 

" There have always been, and always will be, bad 
men in all human pursuits. There was a Judas in the 
college of the Apostles, an Arnold in the army of the 
Revolution, a Burr in our early politics ; and they have 
had successors in all departments of modern hfe. But 
it is demonstrable, as a matter of history, that on the 
whole the standard of public and private morals is higher 
in the United States at the present time than ever be- 
fore ; that men in public and private stations are held 
to a more rigid accountability, and that the average 
moral tone of Congress is higher to-day than at any 
previous period of our history.* It is certainly true that 

* On this point 1 beg to refer the reader to a speech delivered by Hon. 
George F. Hoar, in the House of Representatives, August 9, 1876, in which 
thai distinguished gentleman said: "I believe there is absolutely less of 
corruption, less of maladministration, and less of vice and evfl in public life 
than there was in the sixteen years which covered the administration of 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 169 

our late war disturbed the established order of society, 
awakened a reckless spirit of adventure and speculation, 
and greatly multiplied the opportunities and increased 
the temptations to evil. The disorganization of the 
Southern States and the temporary disfranchisement of 
its leading citizens threw a portion of their representa- 
tion in Congress, for a short time, into the hands of po- 
litical adventurers, many of whom used their brief hold 
on power for personal ends, and thus brought disgrace 
upon the national legislature. And it is also true that 
the enlarged sphere of legislation so mingled public 
duties and private interests, that it was not easy to draw 
the line between them. From that cause, also, the repu- 
tation, and in some cases the character, of public men 
suffered eclipse. But the earnestness and vigor with 
which wrong-doing is everywliere punished is a strong 
guaranty of the purity of those who may hold posts of 
authority and honor. Indeed, there is now danger in 
the opposite direction, namely, that criticism may de- 
generate into mere slander, and put an end to its power 
for good by being used as the means to assassinate the 
reputation and destroy the usefulness of honorable men. 
It is as much the duty of all good men to protect and 
defend the reputation of worthy public servants as to 
detect and punish public rascals. 

" In a word, our national safety demands that the 
fountains of political power shall be made pure by intel- 
ligence, and kept pure by vigilance ; that the best citi- 

Washiugton, the administration of John Adams, and the first term of Jeffer- 
8on." This assertion ia maintained by numerous citations of unquestioned 
facts in the speech. 



170 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

zens shall take heed to the selection and election of the 
worthiest and most intelligent among them to hold seats 
in the national legislature ; and that when the choice has 
been made, the continuance of their representative shall 
depend upon his faithfulness, his ability, and his willing- 
ness to work. 

CONGRESS AND CULTURE. 

"In Congress, as everywhere else, careful study — 
thorough, earnest work — is the only sure passport to 
usefulness and distinction. From its firsts meeting in 
1774 to its last in 1788, three hundred and fifty-four 
men sat in the Continental Congress. Of these, one 
hundred and eighteen — one third of the whole number 
— were college graduates. That third embraced much 
the largest number of those whose names have come 
down to us as the great founders of the republic. Since 
the adoption of the constitution of 1787, six thousand 
two hundred and eighteen men have held seats in Con- 
gress ; and among them all, thorough culture and ear- 
nest, arduous work have been the leading characteristics 
of those whose service has been most useful and whose 
fame has been most enduring. Galloway wrote of 
Samuel Adams : ' He drinks little, eats temperately, 
thinks much, and is most indefatigable in the pursuit of 
his objects.' This description can still be fittingly ap- 
plied to all men who deserve and achieve success any- 
where, but especially in public life. As a recent writer 
has said, in discussing the effect of Prussian culture, so 
we may say of culture in Congress : ^ The lesson is, that 
whether you want him for war or peace, there is no way 



GENERAL GARFIELD ENTERS CONGRESS. 171 

in which you can get so much out of a man as by train- 
ing, not in pieces, but the whole of him ; and that the 
trained men, other things being equal, are pretty sure, 
in the long run, to be masters of the world.' 

" Congress must always be the exponent of the polit- 
ical character and culture of the people ; and if the next 
centennial does not find us a great nation, with a great 
and worthy Congress, it will be because those who repre- 
sent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the 
nation, do not aid in controlling the political forces which 
are employed to select the men who shall occupy the 
great places of trust and power." 



CHAPTER VI. 

GENERAL GARFIELD's CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 

The Wade-Davis Manifesto — General Garfield before the Convention — 
Moral Courage wins the Day — Triumphant Nomination and Election 
of General Garfield — Is appointed a Member of the Committee of Ways 
and Means — Speech on the Constitutional Amendment — A Grand De- 
nunciation of Slavery — Speech on the Recoustruciion of the Southern 
States — Speech on Confiscation — A Reminiscence of the War — Gradual 
Rise of the Negro — How Garfield refused to surrender a Fugitive Slave 
— Speech on State Sovereignty — General Garfield as a Temperance 
Worker — How he shut up a Beer Brewery — A Good Speculation — Gen- 
eral Garfield's Tariff" Record — Views of the Iron and Steel Bulletin- 
General Garfield's Course Satisfactory — To the Protectionists — His Real 
Position on this Question — Re-election of General Garfield to Congress 
— Is made Chairman of the Military Committee — Successive re-elections 
to Congress — Is made Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations — 
Debate on the Civil Appropriation Bill of 1872 — General Garfield's mode 
of conducting Public Business — The Salary Grab — General (iarfield's 
Course respecting it — Letter to a Friend — Garfield successfully Vindi- 
dicates his Course — A Silly Rumor Refuted — General Garfield urges 
the Repeal of the Salary Bill. 

When the time for holding the Congressional Convention 
of General Garfield's district arrived in 1864, his political 
enemies spread the report through the district that he had 
written the famous Wade-Davis manifesto against Presi- 
dent Lincoln, or was at least thoroughly in sympathy 
with it. This manifesto had created the most intense 
excitement throughout the West, and especially in the 



COXGRESSIONAL CAREER. 173 

Western Reserve, where Mr. Lincoln was universally be- 
loved, and where any attempt to criticise his course was 
resented by the sturdy Republican phalanx as almost 
equal to disloyalty. The consequence was that General 
Garfield was summoned by a committee to appear before 
the Convention and explain himself. It seemed to him a 
square ch;illenge to his independence, and he resolved to 
meet it manfully. He went to the Convention, was given 
a seat on the platform, and was called upon by the chair- 
man for a statement as to his connection with the obnox- 
ious letter. He made a speech which he supposed could 
have no other effect than to dig his political grave. He had 
not written the Wade-Davis letter, he said, but he had only 
one regret connected with it, and that was that there was 
a necessity for its appearance. He approved the letter, 
defended the motives of its authors, asserted his right to 
independence of thought and action, and told the delegates 
that if they did not want a free agent for their represent- 
ative, they had better find another man, for he did not 
desire to serve them any longer. After he had finished 
speaking, he left the platform and strode out of the hall. 
When he reached the foot of the stairs he heard a great 
tumult above, which he imagined was the signal of his 
unanimous rejection. On the contrnry, it was the sound 
of his nomination by acclamation. No sooner had he left 
than an Ashtabula delegate rose and said that he thought 
the Convention could not do better than to renominate 
by acclamation a man of such independence and courage 
as General Garfield had just shown himself to be. His 
motion was carried with a hurrah before the delegates 
opposed to Garfield had time to open their mouths. Gov- 



174 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

ernor Todd siiid, after the meeting dispersed, that a dis- 
trict that would allow a young fellow like Garfield to 
tweak its nose and cuff its ears in that manner deserved 
to have him saddled on it for the rest of his life. And it 
came near being the case. 

The election come off in the fall of 1864, and Gen- 
eral Garfield was returned by a majority of nearly 12,o00 
votes. His return to the House was a matter of general 
rejoicing to the Republicans in Congress, and so highly 
was he esteemed that he was appointed a member of 
the Committee of Ways and Means. This was done at 
the request of the Secretary of the Treasury, who had 
spoken of him as one of the best informed men on fi- 
nancial matters to be found in public life. The Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means is the most important in 
the House. It is charged with the consideration and 
preparation of all the financial measures of Congress, 
and provides the means of raising the revenue. Con- 
sequently its members are chosen by the Speaker with 
the greatest care, and are selected from the ablest mem- 
bers of the House. General Garfield gave himself up 
to a profound study of financial matters, and soon made 
it apparent to all that the praise of the Secretary of the 
. Treasury was neither rashly bestowed nor undeserved. 

General Garfield continued an active and leading 
debater in Congress, and fully maintained the reputa- 
tion he had made during his first years in that body. 
He spoke frequently and eloquently. He supported the 
constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery every- 
where within the limits of the United States, and in the 
course of his remarks said : 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 175 

" Mr. Speaker : — We sliall never know why slavery 
dies so hard in this Republic and in this hall till we 
know why sin is long-lived and Satan is immortal. 
With marvellous tenacity of existence, it has outlived 
the expectations of its friends and the hopes of its 
enemies. It has been declared here and elsewhere to 
be in the several stages of mortality — wounded, mori- 
bund, dead. The question was raised by my colleague 
(Mr. Cox) yesterday whether it was indeed dead, or 
only in a troubled sleep. I know of no better illustra- 
tion of its condition than is found in Sallust's admira- 
ble history of the great conspirator, Cataline, who, when 
his final battle was fought and lost, his army broken 
and scattered, was found far in advance of his own 
troops, lying among the dead enemies of Rome, yet 
breathing a little, but exhibiting in his countenance all 
the ferocity of spirit which had characterized his life. 
So, sir, this body of slavery lies before us among the 
dead enemies of the Republic, mortally wounded, im- 
potent in its fiendish wickedness, but with its old fe- 
rocity of look, bearing the unmistakable marks of its 
infernal origin. 

" Who does not remember that thirty years ago — a 
short period in the life of a nation — but little could be 
said with impunity in these halls on the subject of 
slavery? How well do gentlemen here remember the 
history of that distinguished predecessor of mine, Joshua 
R. Giddings, lately gone to his rest, who, with his for- 
lorn hope of faithful men, took his life in his hand, and 
in the name of justice protested against the great crime, 
and who stood bravely in his place until his white locks, 



176 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

like the plume of Henry of Navarre, marked where the 
battle for freedom raged fiercest ! 

" We can hardly realize that this is the same people 
and these the same halls, where now scarcely a man 
can be found who will venture to do more than falter 
out an apology for slavery, protesting in the same breath 
that he has no love for the dying tyrant. None, I be- 
lieve, but that man of more than supernal boldness, 
from the city of New York (Mr. Fernando Wood), has 
ventured, this session, to raise his voice in favor of 
slavery for its own sake. He still sees in its features 
the reflection of beauty and divinity, and, only he. 
* How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of 
the morning ! How art thou cut down to the ground, 
which didst weaken the nations ! ' Many mighty men 
have been slain by thee ; many proud ones have hum- 
bled themselves at thy feet ! All along the coast of our 
political sea these victims of slavery lie like stranded 
wrecks, broken on the headlands of freedom. How 
lately did its' advocates, with impious boldness, maintain 
it .as God's own, to be venerated and cherished as divine. 
It was another and higher form of civilization. It was 
the holy evangel of America dispensing its mercies to a 
benighted race, and destined to bear countless blessings 
to the wilderness of the West. In its mad arrogance it 
lifted its hand to strike down the fabric of the Union, 
and since that fatal day it has been a * fugitive and a 
vagabond upon the earth.' Like the spirit that Jesus 
cast out, it has, since then, * been seeking rest and find- 
ing none.' 

" It has sought in all the corners of the Republic to 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 177 

find some hiding-place in which to shelter itself from 
the death it so richly deserves. 

"It sought an asylum in the untrodden territories 
of the West ; but, with a whip of scorpions, indignant 
freeman drove it thence. I do not believe that a loyal 
man can now be found who would consent that it should 
again enter them. It has no hopes of harbor there. It 
found no protection of favor in the hearts or consciences 
of the freemen of the Republic, and has fled for its last 
hope of safety behind the shield of the constitution. 
We propose to follow it there, and drive it thence as 
Satan was exiled from heaven." 

During the same session the question of the re- 
construction of the Southern States and the proper treat- 
ment of the negroes was debated. General Garfield 
spoke earnestly on the subject, and on one occasion said :• 

" We should do nothing inconsistent with the spirit 
and genius of our institutions. We should do nothing 
for revenge, but everything for security ; nothing for the 
past, everything for the present and the future. Indem- 
nity for the past we can never obtain. The four hundred 
thousand graves in which sleep our fathers and brothers, 
murdered by rebellion, will keep their sacred trust till 
the angel of the resurrection bids the dead come forth. 
The tears, the sorrow, the unutterable anguish of broken 
hearts can never be atoned for. We turn from that sad 
but glorious past, and demand such securities for the 
future as can never be destroyed. 

" We must recognize in all our action the stupendous^ 

facts of the war. In the very crisis of our fate, God 

■ brought us face to face with the ahirming truth that we 

12 



178 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

must lose our own freedom or grant it to the slave. In 
the extremity of our distress we called upon the black 
man to help us save the Republic, and amid the very 
thunder of battle we made a covenant with him, sealed 
both with his blood and ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, 
that when the nation was redeemed he should be free 
and share with us the glories and blessing of freedom. 
In the solemn words of the great Proclamation of Eman- 
cipation, we not only declared the slaves forever free, but 
we pledged the faith of the nation ' to maintain their 
freedom' — mark the words, ' to maintain their freedom.^ 
The Omniscient witness will appear in judgment against 
us if we do not fulfil that covenant. Have we done 
it ? Have we given freedom to the black man ? What 
is freedom ? Is it a mere negation ; the bare privilege 
of not being chained, bought and sold, branded and 
scourged ? If this be all, then freedom is a bitter mock- 
ery, a cruel delusion, and it may well be questioned 
whether slavery were not better. 

" But libeity is no negation. It is a substantive, 
tangible reality. It is the realization of those imperisha- 
ble truths of the Declaration 'that all men are created 
equiil,' that the sanction of all just government is ' the 
consent of the governed.' Can these truths be realized 
until e;ich man has a right to be heard on all matters 
relating to himself? . . . We have passed the Red 
Sea of slaughter ; our garments are yet wet with its 
crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness 
of war, and have left our four hundred thousand heroes 
to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We 
have heard the voice of God, amid the thunders of battle, 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 179 

commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to ' pro- 
claim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabi- 
tants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were 
defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When 
we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now, 
at last, we have reached the confines of the wilderness. 
Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the 
land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and 
glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we 
worthy to enter it ? On what condition may it be ours 
to enjoy and transmit to our children's children ? Let us 
pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. 

" Let us as representatives of the people, whose ser- 
vants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republi- 
can liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 
irreversible guarantees of liberty. Let us here build a 
monument, on which shall be written not only the curses 
of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but 
also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with 
loyalty, liberty, and obedience, and all the people will say 
Amen !" 

When the subject of confiscation was brought up. 
General Garfield spoke at length upon it, and in the 
course of his remarks, related this leaf from his army 
experience : 

" I would have no man there, like one from my own 
State, who came to the army before the great struggle in 
Georgia, and gave us his views of peace. He came as the 
friend of Vallandigham, the man for whom the gentleman 
on the other side of the House from my State worked and 
voted. We were on the eve of a great battle, I said to 



180 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

him, *You wish to make Mr. Vallandighara governor of 
Ohio. Why?' 'Because, in the first place,' using the 
language of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Fer- 
nando Wood), 'you cannot subjugate the South, and we 
propose to withdraw without trying it longer. In the 
next place, we will have nothing to do with this aboli- 
tion war, nor will we give a man or a dollar for its sup- 
port,' (Remember, gentlemen, what occurred in regard to 
the conscription bill this morning). ' To-morrow,' I con- 
tinued, ' we may be engaged in a death struggle with the 
rebel army that confronts us, and is daily increasing. 
Where is the sympathy of your party ? Do you want 
us beaten, or Bragg beaten ? ' He answered that they 
had no interest in fighting ; that they did not beUeve in 
fighting. 

" Mr. Noble. — A question right here. 

" Mr. Garfield. — I cannot yield ; I have no time. 
You can hear his name, if you wish. He was the agent 
sent by the copperhead secretary of state to distribute 
election blanks to the army of the Cumberland. His 
name was Griffiths. 

" Mr. Noble. — A single question. 

" Mr. Garfield. — I have no time to spare. 

" Mr. Noble. — I want to ask the gentleman if he 
knows that Mr. Griffiths has made a question of veracity 
with him by a positive denial of the alleged conversation, 
published in the Cincinnati Enquirer. 

" Mr. Garfield. — No virtuous denials in the Cincinnati 
Enquirer can alter the facts of this conversation, which 
was heard by a dozen officers. 

"I asked him further, 'How would it affect your 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 181 

party if we should crush the rebels in this battle and ut- 
terly destroy them ?' * We would probably lose votes by 
it.' 'How would it affect your party if we should be 
beaten ?' ' It would probably help us in votes.' 

" That, gentlemen, is the kind of support the army is 
receiving in what should be the house of its friends. That, 
gentlemen, is the kind of support these men are inclined 
to give this country and its army in this terrible struggle. 
I hasten to make honorable exceptions. I know there are 
honorable gentlemen on the other side who do not belong 
to that category, and I am proud to acknowledge them as 
my friends. I am sure they do not sympathize with 
these efforts, whose tendency is to pull down the fabric 
of our government, by aiding their friends over the bor- 
der to do it. Their friends, I say, for when the Ohio elec- 
tion was about coming off, in the army at Chattanooga, 
there was more anxiety in the rebel camp than in our own. 
The pickets had talked face to face, and made daily in- 
quiries how the election in Ohio was going. And at mid- 
night of the 13th of October, when the telegraphic news 
was flashed down to us, and it was announced to the army 
that the Union had sixty thousand majority in Ohio, there 
arose a shout from every tent along the line on that rainy 
midnight, which rent the skies with jubilees, and sent de- 
spair to the hearts of those who were ' waiting and watch- 
ing across the border.' It told them that their colleagues, 
their sympathizers, their friends, I had almost said their 
emissaries at the North, had failed to sustain themselves 
in turning the tide against the Union and its army. And 
from that hour, but not till that hour, the army felt safe 
from the enemy behind it. 



182 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

"Thanks to the 13th of October. It told thirteen of 
my colleagues that they had no constituencies." 

General Garfield was an earnest advocate of the policy 
of providing for the negroes by the Government. He fa- 
vored a wise and careful guardianship until they were 
able to care for themselves. In one of his speeches he 
said : 

" I cannot forget that less than five years ago I re- 
ceived an order. from my superior officer in the army, 
commanding me to search my camp for a fugitive slave, 
and, if found, to deliver him up to a Kentucky captain, 
who claimed him as his property ; and I had the honor to 
be, perhaps, the first officer in the army who peremptorily 
refused to obey such an order. We were then trying to 
save the Union without hurting slavery. I remember, sir, 
that when we undertook to agitate in the army the ques- 
tion of putting arms into the hands of the slaves, it was 
said, ' Such a step will be fatal ; it will alienate half our 
army, and lose us Kentucky.' By and by, when our ne- 
cessities were imperious, we ventured to let the negroes 
dig in our trenches, but it would not do to put muskets in 
their hands. We ventured to let a negro drive a mule 
team, but it would not do to have a white man or a mu- 
latto just in front of him or behind him ; all must be ne- 
groes in that train ; you must not disgrace a white soldier 
by putting him in such company. ' By and by,' some 
one said, ' Rebel guerillas may capture the mules ; so, for 
the sake of the mules, let us put a few muskets in the 
wagons and let the negroes shoot the guerillas if they 
come.' So, for the sake of the mules we enlarged the lim- 
its of liberty a little. [Laughter.] By and by we al- 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 183 

lowed the negroes to build fortifications, and armed them 
to save the earthworks they had made — not to do justice 
to the negro, but to protect the earth he had thrown up. 
By and by we said in this hall that we would arm the 
negroes, but they must not be called soldiers, nor wear 
the national uniform, for that would degrade white sol- 
diers. By and by we said, ' Let them wear the uniform, 
but they must not receive the pay of soldiers.' For six 
months we did not pay them enough to feed and clothe 
them ; and their shattered 'regiments came home from 
South Carolina in debt to the Government for the clothes 
they wore. It took us two years to reach a point where 
we were willing to do the most meager justice to the black 
man, and to recognize the truth that, 

' A man's a man for a' that.' " 

The incident to which General Garfield referred in the 
first part of the above remarks is related as follows by an 
officer of General Sherman's staff : 

" One day I noticed a fugitive slave come rushing into 
camp with a bloody head, and apparently frightened 
almost to death. He had only passed my tent a moment 
when a regular bully of a fellow came riding up, and, 
with a volley of oaths, began to ask after his ' nigger.' 

" General Garfield was not present, and he passed on 
to the division commander. This division commander 
was a sympathizer with the theory that fugitives should 
be returned to their masters, and that the Union soldiers 
should be made the instruments for returning them. He 
accordingly wrote a mandatory order to Gener.il Gar- 
field, in whose command the darky was supposed to be 



184 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

hiding, telling him to hunt out and deliver over the prop- 
erty of the outraged citizen. 

" I stated the case as fully as I could to General Gar- 
field before handing him the order, but did not color my 
statement in any way. He took the order, and deliber- 
ately wrote on it the following indorsement : 

" ^ I respectfully, but positively, decline to allow my 
command to search for, or deliver up, any fugitive slaves. 
I conceive that they are here for quite another purpose. 
The command is open, and no obstacles will be placed in 
the way of the search.' 

" I read the indorsement, and was frightened. I ex- 
pected that, if returned, the result would be that the 
general would be court-martialled. I told him my fears. 
He simply replied : 

" ' The matter may as well be tested first as last 
Right is right, and I do not propose to mince matters at 
all. My soldiers are here for far other purposes than 
hunting and returning fugitive slaves.' " 

During the session a resolution was offered tendering 
the thanks of Congress to General George H. Thomas, for 
his conduct at the battle of Chickamauga, and reflecting, 
as General Garfield thought, unjustly upon his old chief, 
General Rosecrans. Tiiis brought Garfield to his feet, 
and in a brilliant and earnest speech he eulogized Gen- 
eral Rosecrans, while at the same time he did full justice 
to General Thomas. 

During the session it was proposed to grant the sanc- 
tion of the Government of the United States to the con- 
struction of a new railway line between New York and 
Philadelphia. This was opposed on the ground that the 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 185 

State of New Jersey had granted a monopoly of the rail- 
road traffic across her limits between those points to the 
Camden and Amboy Railroad Company, and that the 
proposed action of Congress would be an unwarrantable 
interference with the sovereign authority of that State. 
Upon this subject General Garfield spoke with great 
eloquence, and his speech was generally regarded as one 
of the most convincing arguments against State sover- 
eignty ever delivered in Congress. He said : 

" Mr. Coleridge somewhere says that abstract defini- 
tions have done more harm in the world than plague and 
famine and war. I believe it. I believe that no man 
will ever be able to chronicle all the evils that have re- 
sulted to this nation from the abuse of the words ' sover- 
eign' and ^ sovereignty.' What is this thing called ' State 
sovereignty ? ' Nothing more false was ever uttered in 
the halls of legislation than that any State of this Union 
is sovereign. Consult the elementary text-books of law, 
and refresh your recollection of the definition of ' sover- 
eignty.' Speaking of the sovereignty of nations, Black- 
stone says : 

" ' However they began, by what right soever they 
subsist, there is and must be in all of them a supreme, 
irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority in which the 
jura summi imperii or rights of sovereignty reside.' 

" Do these elements belong to any State of this Re- 
public ? Sovereignty has the right to declare war. Can 
New Jersey declare war ? It has the right to conclude 
peace. Can New Jersey conclude peace ? Sovereignty 
has the right to coin money. If the Legislature of New 
Jersey should authorize and command one of its citizens 



/ 

186 JAMES A. GARFIELD: 

to coin a half-dollar, that man, if he made it, though it 
should be of solid silver, would be locked up in a felon s 
cell for the crime of counterfeiting the com of the real 
sovereign. A sovereign has the right to make treaties 
with foreign nations. Has New Jersey the right to 
make treaties? Sovereignty is clothed with the right 
to regulate commerce Avith foreign states. New Jersey 
has no such right. Sovereignty has the right to put 
ships in commission upon the high seas. Should a ship 
set sail under the authority of New Jersey it would be 
seized as a smuggler, forfeited and sold. Sovereignty 
has a flag. But, thank God, New Jersey has no flag; 
Ohio has no flag. No loyal State fights under the ' lone 
star,' the ' rattlesnake,' or the ' palmetto tree.' No loyal 
State of this Union has any flag but * the banner of 
beauty and of glory,' the flag of the Union. These are 
the indispensable elements of sovereignty. New Jersey 
has not one of them. The term cannot be applied to the 
separate States, save in a very limited and restricted 
Gense, referring mainly to municipal and police regula- 
tions. The rights of the States should be jealously 
guarded and defended. But to claim that sovereignty in 
its full sense and meaning belongs to the States is noth- 
ing better than rankest treason. Look again at this doc- 
ument of the Governor of New Jersey. He tells you 
that the States entered into the ' national compact F 
National compact ! I had supposed that no governor of 
a loyal State would pjirade this dogma of nullification and 
secession which was killed and buried by Webster on the 
16th of February, 1833. 

" There was no such thing as a sovereign State mak- 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 187 

ing a compact called a constitution. The very language 
of the Constitution is decisive : ' We, the people of the 
United States, do ordain and establish this Constitution.' 
The States did not make a compact to be broken when 
any one pleased, but the people ordained and estahllshed 
the Constitution of a sovereign Republic ; and woe be to 
any corporation or State that raises its hand against the 
majesty and power of this great nation." 

General Garfield is an active and ardent worker in 
the temperance cause. About this time he gave a prac- 
tical evidence of his devotion to its principles, which is 
thus related by Mr. H. L. Baker. He states that it was 
told to him by a man who lived almost next door to Gen- 
eral Garfield, in Painesville, Ohio, for ten years, and 
during that time the events spoken of occurred. 

"It was in 1865 that the temperance people of 
Painesville were a good deal worked up over a beer 
brewery running full blast in their midst. They held 
meeting after meeting, and discussed all sorts of plans for 
getting rid of the obnoxious industry, but all to no 
avail as far as any practical outcome was concerned. 

" During that time General Garfield returned home, 
and attended the next temperance meeting as an earnest, 
enthusiastic temperance man. The same old subject of 
the brewery came up. After listening a few minutes, the 
general rose up and said : 

" ' Gentlemen, it is the easiest thing in the world to 
dispose of that brewery. I will agree to do it in one 
hour.' 

" The announcement took them all by surprise, of 
course. Suppress in one hour the nuisance they had so 



188 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

long bothered their heads over ? Do in one hour what 
they failed to do in six months ? It seemed impossible. 
But he soon showed them that he meant business. 

*' He went over to the brewery, and in less than an 
hour he had purchased the whole property and paid cash, 
some $10,000, I believe. He destroyed all the manufac- 
tured liquor, and all the exclusive brewing machinery. 
What disposal to make of the property was now the 
question. It did not lie idle long, however. 

" The next fall he converted the building and ma- 
chinery into a large cider-mill, and made hundreds of bar- 
rels of cider. Not one drop of cider would he sell or give 
away, for he was too strict a temperance man to think it 
right to drink even cider ; but every barrel of it he kept 
till it had become cider vinegar, and then sold it. 

" The good people of the town were glad to learn that, 
after the property proved to be a good investment, and 
the general made it pay him well. After using the build- 
ing four or five years he sold it to other parties, and 
moved upon his farm at Mentor, Lake County, Ohio. 

" This is a small thing, to be sure ; but it shows that 
General Garfield's principles are not a dead letter, but are 
real, live matters, wTiich he is ready to put into practice 
in his daily life." 

Throughout the reconstruction period and the quarrel 
between Congress and President Johnson, General Gar- 
field warmly championed the cause of Congress against 
the President. He made a good record on the Committee 
of Ways and Means, and was in favor of a moderate pro- 
tective tariff and a steady reduction of public expendi- 
tures and taxation. 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 189 

Mr. Garfield's course with regard to a protective 
tariff is thus summed up by The Iron and Steel Bulletin, 
one of the leading protectionist journals of the United 
States : 

" General Garfield's tariff record having been made a 
subject of discussion since his nomination for the Presi- 
dency, it is both just and proper that we should state that 
the protectionists of the country, who have kept watch 
over tariff legislation during the past twenty years, and 
who have assisted to shape and maintain the present tariff, 
are perfectly satisfied with his tariff votes and speeches. 
They and all other protectionists have indeed abundant 
reason to be thankful to him for valuable assistance ren- 
dered to the cause of industry when it was in serious peril 
from free-trade attacks. His votes and speeches have 
been uniformly and consistently in favor of the protective 
policy. His first tariff speech in Congress was made in 
1866. In this speech he carefully defined his position 
on the question of protection as follows : 

" ' I hold that a properly adjusted competition between 
home and foreign products is the best gauge by which to 
regulate international trade. Duties should be so high 
that our manufactures can fairly compete with the foreign 
product, but not so high as to enable them to drive out 
the foreign article, enjoy a monopoly of the trade, and 
regulate the price as they please. This is my doctrine of 
protection. If Congress pursues this line of policy stead- 
ily, we shall, year by year, approach more nearly to the 
basis of free trade, because we shall be more nearly able 
to compete with other nations on equal terms. I am for a 
protection that leads to ultimate free trade. I am for that 



190 JAMES A.GARFIELD: 

free trade which can only be achieved through a reason- 
able protection.' 

" There was nothing in this declaration to which pro- 
tectionists could fairly object. We are exporting many 
products of American workshops and factories to-day be- 
cause protection has made their production and exporta- 
tion possible. Great Britain was able to establish and 
maintain free trade only after centuries of the most vigor- 
orous protection of all her industries. This country is 
simply copying her wise example, and in the extract we 
have quoted, General Garfield distinctly declares his ap- 
proval of it. 

"In his next speech, delivered in 1870, upon General 
Schenck's tariff bill, which provoked a long and bitter 
controversy, General Garfield advised the protectionists 
of the House to assent to a moderate reduction of the 
war duties which were then in force, for the reason that 
they were higher than was necessary for the protection 
of our industries, and, being so, they gave occasion for 
unfriendly criticism of the protective policy, from which 
it should be relieved. He said : 

" ' After studying the whole subject as carefully as I 
am able, I am firmly of the opinion that the wisest thing 
that the protectionists in this House can do, is to unite in 
a moderate reduction of duties on imported articles. He 
is not a faithful representative who merely votes for the 
highest rate proposed in order to show on the record that 
he voted for the highest figure, and therefore is a sound 
protectionist. He is the wisest man who sees the tides 
and currents of public opinion, and uses his best efforts to 
protect the industry of the people against sudden col- 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 191 

lapses and sudden changes. Now, if I do not misunder- 
stand the signs of the times, unless we do this ourselves, 
prudently and wisely, we shall before long be compelled 
'to submit to a violent reduction, made rudely and without 
discrimination, which will shock, if not shatter, all our 
protected industries. 

" ' The great want of industry is a stable policy ; and 
it is a significant comment on the character of our legisla- 
tion that Congress has become a terror to the business 
men of the country. This very day the great industries 
of the nation are standing still, half paralyzed at the un- 
certainty which hangs over our proceedings here. A dis- 
tinguished citizen of my own district has lately written to 
me this significant sentence : ' If the laws of God and 
nature were as vascillating and uncertain as the laws of 
Congress in regard to the business of its people, the uni- 
verse would soon fall into chaos.' 

" ' Examining thus the possibilities of the situation, I 
beheve that the true course for the friends of protection 
to pursue is to reduce the rates on imports whenever we 
can justly and safely do so ; and, accepting neither of the 
extreme doctrines urged on this floor, endeavor to estab- 
lish a stable policy that will commend itself to all patri- 
otic and thoughtful people.' 

" General Schenck's bill passed the House June 6, 
1870, General Garfield voting for it in company with all 
the protectionists in that body. It passed the Senate dur- 
ing the sami mo th, such leading protectionists as Sena- 
tors Howe, Scott, Morrill, of Vermont, Sherman, and 
Wilson voting for it. The bill reduced the duties on a 
long list of articles — pig iron, for instance, from $9 to 



192 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

$7 — but it was a triumpli of the protective policy, and 
a disastrous defeat of the free traders and revenue re- 
formers, who had favored still lower duties. It embodied 
provisions that are retained in the existing tariff, with 
which all protectionists are entirely satisfied. 

In 1872, two years after the passage of General 
Schenck's bill, a bill, to reduce duties on imports and 
to reduce internal taxes, was reported to the House 
of Representatives by Mr. Dawes, the chairman of the 
Ways and Means Committee, and after discussion it 
passed by a large majority, such prominent protectionists 
as Dawes, Frye, Foster, Frank W. Palmer, Ellis H. Rob- 
erts, William A. Wheeler, and George F. Hoar voting for 
it. General Garfield voted for it. Judge Kelley and 
sixty other protectionists voted against it. It became a 
law, passing the Senate by a two-thirds vote, such lead- 
ing protectionists as Ferry, Howe, the two Morrills, Mor' 
ton, Sherman, and Wilson supporting it. Protectionists, 
as will be seen, were not united upon the merits of this 
bill, which, among other provisions, reduced the duty on 
many iron and steel products ten per cent., but there 
was no conflict of principle involved in their differences 
— nothing but a question of expediency. 

In 1875, three years after the passage of the bill just 
referred to, Mr. Dawes, still chairman of the Ways and 
Means Committee, reported a bill to farther protect the 
sinking fund and to provide the exigencies of the Gov- 
ernment, which provided among other things for the res- 
toration of the ten per cent, which had been taken from 
the duties on iron and steel by the act of 1872. This bill 
passed the House by a close vote, General Garfield vot- 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 193 

ing for it, as did nearly every protectionist in the House. 
The bill passed the Senate and became a law, the vote 
being very close — yeas thirty, nays twenty-nine. The 
protectionists in the Senate were almost unanimously in 
favor of it. Mr. Sherman made a strong speech against 
it, and Mr. Scott and Mr. Frelinghuysen very ably sup- 
ported it. Mr. Sherman voted against it. The passage 
of this bill gave great encouragement to our prostrated 
iron and steel industries. 

" The next tariff measure that came before Congress 
was the bill of j^Ir. Morrison, which was presented in the 
House in 1876, but was so vigorously opposed that it 
never reached the dignity of a square vote upon its 
merits. Two years afterwards Mr. Wood undertook the 
preparation of a tariff bill which greatly reduced duties 
on most articles of foreign manufacture, and which he 
confidently hoped might become a law. This bill pos- 
sessed more vitality than that of Mr. Morrison, and it 
was with great difticulty that the friends of protection 
were able to secure its defeat. In the early as well as 
in the later stages of the struggle there was no uncer- 
tainty about the position of General Garfield ; he was 
against the bill. On the 4th of June he delivered an. 
elaborate speech against it in Committee of the Whole, 
in the course of which he said : 

" ' I would have the duty so adjusted that every great 
American industry can fairly live and make fiiir profits. 
The chief charge I make against this bill is that it seeks 
to cripple the protective features of the law.' 

" He further said, in concluding his speech : 

" ' A bill so radical in its character, so dangerous to 

13 



194 JAMES A. GARFIELD: 

our business prosperity, would work infinite mischief at 
this time, when the country is just recovering itself from 
a long period of depression and getting again upon solid 
ground, just coming up out of the wild sea of panic and 
distress which has tossed up so long. 

" ' Let it be remembered that twenty-two per cent. 

\ of all the laboring people of this country are artisans 
engaged in manufactures. Their culture has been fos- 
tered by our tariff laws. It is their pursuits and the 
skill which they have developed that produced the glory 
of our Centennial Exhibition. To them the country 
owes the splendor of the position it holds before the 
world more than to any other equal number of our citi- 
zens. If this bill becomes a law, it strikes down their 
occupation and throws into the keenest distress the 
brightest and best elements of our population. 

"*When the first paragraph has been read, I will 
propose to strike out the enacting clause. If the com- 

i mittee will do that, we can kill the bill to-day.' 

! "" On the day following the delivery of General Gar- 
field's speech, his suggestion to strike out the enacting 
clause was carried into effect, upon motion of Mr. Con- 
ger, and the bill was killed — yeas 134, nays 121. The 
majority against the bill was only 13. 

" During the recent session of Congress a vigorous 
effort was made to break down the tariff by piecemeal 
legislation. ' Divide and conquer ' was the motto of the 
free traders. They were defeated in every effort to 
reduce duties, and in every instance they encountered 
General Garfield's opposition. Iron and steel manufac- 
turers have good cause to remember his vote in the 



M 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 195 

Ways and Means Committee last March, on the bill of 
Mr. Covert to reduce the duty on steel rails. General 
Garfield voted with Judge Kelley and Messrs. Conger, 
Frye, Felton, Gibson, and Phelps against any reduction, 
and that was the end of Mr. Covert's bill — the vote 
being seven against to six in favor of it. Had the bill 
prevailed, the entire line of duties on iron and steel and 
other manufactures would have been seriously en- 
dangered. 

" Such is General Garfield's tariff record, and as we ^ 
have already stated, it is entirely satisfactory to pro- 
tectionists. He has been charged with being a member 
of the British free trade Cobden Club, but he has re- 
peatedly declared over his own signature that the use 
of his name by the Cobden Club was wholly unautho- 
rized by him, and that its free trade doctrines did not 
meet with his approval. If the club thought, by the 
conferring of an empty compliment, to entrap him into 
an expression of sympathy with its philosophy of sel- 
fishness and greed, it failed signally. . 

" General Garfield is a candidate for the Presidency. 
With that we have nothing to do. Our readers will 
vote for or against him as they please. But General 
Garfield has rendered great service to the cause of home 
industry during his public career, and we would have 
been untrue to ourselves and to every individual mem- 
ber of this association if we had not testified as we 
have done to the excellence and fulness of that service, 
now that his tariff record has been misrepresented. 
American iron and steel manufacturers have found him 
a wise friend in time of need, and we say so gratefully." 



196 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

In 1866 General Garfield was again a candidate 
for the House of Representatives. A few of his con- 
stituents living in the Mahoning Valley, an iron pro- 
ducing district, opposed his nomination on the ground 
that he did not favor as high a tariff on iron as they 
wanted. The Convention, however, was overwhelm- 
ingly on his side, and he was nominated with enthu- 
siasm, and elected by a majority of 10,000 votes. At 
the meeting of Congress General Garfield was appointed 
by the Speaker of the House Chairman of the Committee 
on Military Affairs. In this position he rendered good 
service to the country and to his party. His commit- 
tee was kept busy remodelling the regular army to suit 
the altered needs of the country, and looking after the 
demands of the discharged soldiers for pay and bounty, 
of which many had been deprived by the red tape de- 
cisions of the accounting officers of the Government. 

In 1868 Gen. Garfield was opposed in the nominat- 
ing convention of his district by Darius Caldwell, of Ash- 
tabula, who secured forty votes. General Garfield was, 
however, nominated by a handsome majority, and elected 
as usual by the people at the polls. He continued to 
serve on the Military Committee of the House, adding to 
bis reputation and rendering good service to the country. 

In 1870 General Garfield was again elected to Con- 
gress, this time without opposition. In 1872 a few blank 
ballots were cast in the convention, and the Liberal Re- 
publicans ran a candidate in opposition to him at the 
polls, but he was elected by his usual triumphant ma- 
jority. 

At the meeting of the forty-second Congress in 1871, 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 197 

General Garfield was appointed by the Speaker, Chair- 
man of the House Committee on Appropriations, and 
held this position nntil the elections of 1874 gave the 
Democrats control of the House. In this important posi- 
tion he largely reduced the expenditures of the Govern- 
ment, and thoroughly reformed the system of estimates 
and appropriations, providing for closer accountability on 
the part of those who spend the public money, and a 
clear knowledge, on the part of those who vote it, of what 
it is used for. 

A fair idea of the manner in which General Garfield 
carried out the work of his committee may be gained 
from the following. The Sundry Civil Appropriation 
Bill for 1872 was passed by the House and sent to the 
Senate, where several amendments were tacked on to it. 
These amendments did not all meet the approval of Gen- 
eral Garfield, and on the 8th of June, 1872, he rose in 
the House, as Chairman of the Appropriation Committee, 
and said : 

" I ask the House to allow me to submit the proposi- 
tion to non-concur in all the amendments of the Senate to 
the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill, and to accede to the 
request of the Senate for a Committee of Conference." 

Mr. Campbell, of Ohio, said : " I hope the suggestion 
of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations 
(Mr. Garfield) will be accepted. By accepting it the 
minority will lose none of their privileges, for they will 
have the same right to make dilatory motions after the 
report of the Committee of Conference comes before the 
House that they now have." 

Mr. Beck, of Kentucky, said : " This side of the 



198 JAMES A. GARFIELD: 

House will, I have no doubt, vote unanimously for the 
bill as it came from the Senate, with the exception of the 
bayonet clause. If the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gar- 
field) will offer a substitute containing every proposition 
of the Senate except that, we will assent to it." 

Mr. Garfield said, " If the * bayonet clause,' as the 
gentleman terms it, were off, and all the other amend- 
ments of the Senate were retained, I shoukl be compelled 
to Tote against the bill, because there are appropriations 
to the amount of more than a million and a half of dol- 
lars which have been put on by the Senate, to which, 
as Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, I can 
never consent. ... I ask the gentlemen to allow me 
to take the sense of the House on my proposition." 

The question was taken, and (two-thirds not voting 
in favor thereof) it was decided in the negative. 

After some further debate, Mr. Garfield said : " I have 
sent a resolution to the desk, which I ask to be read." 

The clerk then read as follows : 

" Resolved, That the House non-concur in the amend- 
ments of the Senate to the House Bill No. 2705, being 
the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill, and agree to a con- 
ference thereon ; and that upon the appointment of such 
committee, the House do take a recess until eight o'clock 
on Monday morning." 

The question being put, the resolution was adopted. 

The Chair announces the appointment of Mr. Gar- 
field, of Ohio, Mr. Palmer, of Iowa, and Mr. Niblack of 
Indiana, as the conferees on the part of the House, oa the 
disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the amendments 
of the Senate to the biU H. R. No. 2705. 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 199 

On the 10th of June, Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, said : "I 
rise to make a privileged report." 

The clerk read the report of the Committee of Con- 
ference on the Civil Sundry Appropriation Bill. 

After some remarks by Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, 
in opposition to the report, Mr. Garfield said : 

" On the merits of the amendment now in debate by 
itself considered, I will not now speak. No man on this 
floor regrets more than I do that the House was brought 
to a dead-lock on a question of this sort appended to a 
general appropriation bill. But there is another phase of 
the subject which rises altogether above that amendment 
or any other amendment that can be brought into this 
House. To discuss that greater question I must call the 
attention of members to the parliamentary history of this 
bill. It is one of the twelve great appropriation bills ne- 
cessary for carrying on the Government. After being 
considered forty days in the Committee of Appropriations, 
after being elaborately debated in this House, it went to 
the Senate, and, after having there encountered storm 
and tempest of no ordinary character, it came back to the 
House with such amendments as the Senate saw fit to 
add. Again in the House, it was a bill in order under the 
rules of parliamentary law, for our rules do not allow us 
to rule as out of order an amendment added by the Sen- 
ate. The bill, then, being in order, there were but five 
courses of action open to the Houses in the ordinary pro- 
cesses of legislation. The first was to refer it back to the 
Committee on Appropriations, to be considered and brought 
back subject to the order of the House. The second was, 
we might have referred it to the Committee of the Whole 



200 JAMES A. GARFIELD: 

on the state of the Union, where it would have been open 
to debate and amendment on every one of the ninety-three 
amendments, and then to be reported back to the House 
to await the further order of this body. A third course 
was, that we should proceed to consider it in open House 
under the five minutes' rule, subject to amendments and 
debate. A fourth plan was to non-concur in all the Sen- 
ate amendments and send the bill to a committee of con- 
ference, to be again brought back into the House. There 
was a fifth phin, to concur in all the Senate amendments, 
and then send the bill to the President for his approval. 

" Now, there is no other ordinary course to be taken 
with an appropriation bill, and I call the attention of the 
House to the fiict that I and my associates on the Com- 
mittee on Appropriations tried again and again in the 
House each and all of these five ordinary courses of pro- 
cedure, and again and again did the minority of this 
House refuse to allow the House to take either of these 
courses until late at night of Saturday, and after a twelve 
hours' session, and then only on condition that the non- 
concurrence and reference to a conference committee 
should be coupled with a recess which should bring us 
within four hours of the final adjournment of Congress. 
In other words, the minority have for days refused to 
allow the usual legislative processes to be employed in 
reference to a great and necessary public measure ; they 
have refused to allow it to be debated or considered ex- 
cept upon terms of their own dictation wholly beyond the 
ordinary range of parliamentary order. 

" Mr. Speaker, a question has, therefore, arisen, in its 
importance far above any item in this bill, and it is simply 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 201 

this : shall the majority of the members of this House 
have the right to consider and act upon a great appropri- 
ation bill in the mode provided in the rules ? The mo- 
ment a minority, however large, deny that proposition, 
that moment we are in the midst of a parliamentary revo- 
lution, and legislation of any sort is impossible for ever- 
more until that position be utterly abandoned. In saying 
this I do not fail to recognize the utmost right of the mi- 
nority to make dilatory motions for any and all legitimate 
purposes. I recognize that right whenever the minority 
is being oppressed by any parliamentary proceeding. If, 
for instance, we should insist that a bill should be passed 
without being read, I would filibuster as long as any man 
here to prevent it, if it were a bill that I did not under- 
stand or approve. 

" Mr. Eldredge, of Wisconsin, said : I want to ask a 
question on this particular point, as to what was said by 
him to gentlemen on this side of the House, and to me 
personally. 

"Mr. Garfield. — When we went into the conference 
committee, we sat two hours on Saturday night, running 
our session into midnight. 

" We met on Sunday, and sat eight hours continu- 
ously. At the end of six hours we had finished, to the 
satisfaction of the conferees, every other item of disagree- 
ment between the two Houses. When we reached the 
tenth amendment, the one in dispute, the Senate con- 
ferees informed us that they could make no report that 
did not treat of that subject in it ; that the report must 
be one and a whole. The committee on the part of the 
House was then compelled to adopt one of two courses, 



202 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

either at eight o'clock on Monday morning, four hours 
before the time fixed for final adjournment, bring back a 
report that they had made no progress whatever, that 
nothing was agreed to, nothing settled, thus making it 
wholly impossible to reach an adjustment before twelve 
o'clock, or to bring in a report concurring in something. 

" After mature deliberation, we thought it to be our 
duty to bring in a report, and in order to do that we 
proposed a substitute to the Senate's tenth amendment. 
That substitute consists, in the main, of the enforcement 
bill sent to the House by the Senate a few weeks since ; 
but there are two or three important modifications put on 
that at the suggestion of the House conferees. 

" The amendment thus guarded is clearly within the 
provisions of the Constitution, which empower Congress 
to regulate the time, place, and manner of holding elec- 
tions for the representatives in Congress. Now, the 
Committee of Conference having brought in a report un- 
der the rules, I do now insist, and shall continue to de- 
mand, Ihat the bill before the House shall be acted on ; 
and against all factions and revolutionary resistance I 
propose to stand, if need be, until December next, until 
this appropriation bill shall be considered, shall be voted 
on, voted up or voted down. 

" And now, once for all, I say to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Eldredge), and to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelley), that I have said no word to 
them or to any man inconsistent with the declarations I 
have made in these remarks. I challenge any man to 
the proof, if he venture to join the issue. 

"After some debate, Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 203 

moved to recommit the report to the committee, and his 
motion was sustained by the House, by a vote of yeas 
99, nays 79, 62 members not voting. 

" Subsequently, Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, said : Mr. 
Speaker, I desire to submit the following report from the 
the Committee of Conference. 

" The clerk read as follows : 

" The Committee of Conference on the disagreeing 
votes of the two Houses on the amendments to the bill 
(H. R. No. 2705) making appropriations for sundry civil 
expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending 
June 30, 1873, and for other purposes, having met, after 
full and free conference, have been unable to agree. 

James A. Garfield, 
Frank W. Palmer, 
Wm. E. Niblack, 
Managers on the part of the House. 

Cornelius Cole, 
Geo. F. Edmunds, 
John W. Stevenson. 
Managers on the part of the Senate. 

" Mr. Garfield, of Ohio. — The Senate originally asked 
for a committee of conference in reference to the dis- 
agreeing votes of the two Houses on this bill, and I sup- 
pose they will make known their wishes. I do not know 
but the House might hasten business by ordering a new 
conference. I move the appointment of a new Confer- 
ence on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the 
bill; and on that motion I demand the previous question. 

" The motion of Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, was agreed to. 



204 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

"The Speaker. — The chair appoints the same con- 
ferees as managers on the part of the House. 

" Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, soon after submitted a privi- 
leged report, and said : In explanation of the report, I 
desire to state to the House that the main body of the 
report is the same as was presented before. Three im- 
portant changes were made, in view of additional facts 
brought before the Conference Committee as to the 
amount of the sums appropriated. Beyond those three 
changes every word is the same, except what relates to 
the tenth amendment, the matter in contest between the 
two Houses. 

" There are but three changes made in that tenth 
amendment. We strike out the words ' this act or,' in 
the fortieth line of the print which the gentlemen have 
before them. The second change is the forty-third line, 
where we strike out the wordw * he resides,' and insert in 
lieu thereof the words ' his duties are to be performed.' 
The third, and the one of chief importance, is the addi- 
tion of a proviso at the end of line sixty-two, in these 
words : 

" ' And provided further, That the supervisors here- 
in provided for shall have no power or authority to 
make arrests or to perform other duties than to be in 
the immediate presence of the officers holding the 
election, aud to witness all their proceedings, includ- 
ing the counting of the votes, and the making of a 
return thereof 

"The effect of this is that the supervisors autho- 
rized by this act stand by and witness the proceedings 
of the election, and have the official right to stand by ; 



I 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 205 

SO that if frauds are being perpetrated, the Government 
of the United States may have as witnesses a member 
of the Demoeratie party, and one of the Republican 
party, to the facts in the case. 

*' Mr. Eldredge. — I desire to ask the Chairman of the 
Committee on Appropriations if the words ' guarded and 
inspected ' are not retained in the bill. 

'^Mr. Garfield. — No, sir. It is provided that when 
ten citizens in any county or parish in any Congres- 
sional district shall apply to the judge of the district in 
which such county or parish is situated, ' to have said 
registration or election both guarded and scrutinized.' 

" Mr. Eldredge. — Yes, those are the words, ' guarded 
and scrutinized.' 

" Mr. Garfield. — The persons applying express their 
wish to have the elections guarded and scrutinized. 
But the powers of the persons appointed for that pur- 
pose are in terms restricted by the proviso I have read. 

" Mr. Eldredge. — They are to guard and scrutinize 
the election. 

"Mr. Garfield. — The gentleman is in error. The 
words * guarded and scrutinized apply only to the form 
of application made to the judge. But those words do 
not apply at all to the powers of the persons appointed. 
Their powers are defined and limited by the strong 
language of the proviso which, I have just read. They 
are thus made mere witnesses of all the transactions of 
the election. 

" Mr. Kerr, of Indiana, said : Before my colleague 
(Mr. Niblack) takes the floor, I want to ask a question, in 
order to remove any doubt upon the mind of any member 



206 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

of the House. I desire to know of the Chairman of the 
Committee of Appropriations whether he understands 
that there is anything in the language of this amendment 
that touches the matter of qualifications of electors. 

" Mr. Garfield. — I understand, on the contrary, that 
there is nothing that can touch or change the qualifica- 
tions of electors now provided by law. 

" Mr. Ritchie, of Maryland, said : In the State of 
Maryland the judges of the election have no discretion 
as to the qualifications of voters. They are controlled 
by the registration list ; in fact, they are merely record- 
ing officers. Now, I ask the gentlemen what would be 
the relation of the supervisors contemplated by this 
amendment to our registration and elections ? 

" Mr. Garfield. — That of simply standing by and see- 
ing the work done, without any other power than to 
witness it from beginning to end. 

"Mr. Eldredge. — Gentlemen who have not surren- 
dered their opposition on this question have not yet 
had an opportunity to speak. None of us have had 
that opportunity who feel that we cannot surrender our 
opposition as long as we have the power to resist this 
measure. I ask the gentleman to yield to me for two 
or three minutes. 

" Mr. Garfield. — Gentlemen all around me insist that 
I shall call the previous question. I cannot yield far- 
ther. 

" Mr. Holman, of Indiana, said : This is the most 
fatal measure ever brought into this Congress. 

" Mr. Haldeman, of Pennsylvania, said : We are not 
going to yield. 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 207 

" Mr. Eldredge. — It is an unconstitutional bill. 

" Mr. Holman. — It is most infamous in its character. 

" Mr. Garfield. — I now move that the rules be sus- 
pended, and that the House proceed to take an imme- 
diate vote, without dilatory motions, upon agreeing to 
the report of the Committee of Conference. 

" The question was put on the motion of Mr. Gar- 
field to suspend the rules ; and there were — yeas 122, 
nays 23. 

" So, two-thirds voting in favor thereof, the rules 
were suspended. 

"The Speaker. — The House has directed that it 
now vote by yeas and nays upon this question. Will 
the House agree to the report of the Committee of Cdij^ 
ference on the disagreements of the Senate to the Sun- 
dry Civil Appropriation Bill ? 

" The question was taken ; and it was decided in the 
affirmative, as follows : yeas 102, nays 79 ; not voting, 59. 

" So the report of the Committee of Conference was 
agreed to." 

On the 24th of February, 1873, the Appropriation 
Bill being under consideration, Mr. Butler, of Massachu- 
setts, offered an amendment increasing the salaries paid 
to the President and Vice-President of the United States, 
the heads of departments, and the members of Con- 
gress. This measure did not meet with Mr. Garfield's ap- 
proval, and at the close of Mr. Butler's remarks, he said : 

" I desire to answer some of the points which have 
been made in support of this amendment. Some of the 
salaries referred to in the amendment, I doubt not, are too 
low — perhaps all of them. But I feel it to be my duty 



208 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

to call the attention of the committee to the movement of 
salaries in the last ten years. I hold in my hand a state- 
ment of salaries other than legislative, as they were paid 
in 1860. The total amount of the salaries of officers of 
this government, in the several executive departments 
here in Washington in 1860, was $809,864.67. The war 
so greatly increased our civil service, that now, in the 
year just closed, in the calendar year 1872, the total 
for the same classes of salaries with the increase of bu- 
reaus that have been put on the various departments, 
was 13,598,878.35, being an increase of $2,789,113.68. 

" Now the fact that the salaries of the officers of the 
Government other than legislative, have been thus in- 
creased in the twelve years, is a fact that the House 
ought to know. And when it is proposed to increase the 
salaries by a sum J think somewhere in the neighborhood 
of a million and a half or two millions of dollars in one 
amendment, I feel it my duty to show them what the 
total of the salaries will be. I, of course, believe that the 
propositions in this amendment ought to be separated. 
Some of them gentlemen ought doubtless to vote for. 
But to pass that amendment in the lump, as laid before 
the committee now, I do not think it just, I do not think 
it equitable, and I do not think the House will do it ; it 
ought not to be done." 

Notwithstanding General Garfield's opposition, the 
bill passed the House, and was sent to the Senate, where 
it was amended. The amendments were not satisfactory 
to the House, and a Committee of Conference was ap- 
pointed. It resulted in the presentation of a bill by Gen- 
eral Garfield, making a large increase in the\salaries of the 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 



209 



Executive officers of the Government and members of 
Congress. On the 3d of March, 1873, in presenting this 
bill, General Garfield said : 

" Mr. Speaker, if I can have the attention of the 
House, I will explain the points embraced in this report, 
in reference to the salaries of the President, Vice-Presi- 
dent, Cabinet officers, members of the Supreme Court, 
and members of the two Houses of Congress. The 
amendment known as the Butler Amendment was agreed 
to by the Senate in everything except the provision in 
reference to the salaries of members of Congress. I wish 
to state in a few words the condition of that question in 
the conference. In the first place the Senate voted di- 
rectly on the proposition to strike out the provision 
increasing the salary of members of Congress, and by a 
large vote refused to strike it out. The Senate conferees 
insisted that the $6,500 clause, cutting off mileage, actu- 
ally reduced the pay of some eighteen members of the 
Senate. They refused, therefore, to submit to an amend- 
ment which cut down the salary of so many senators. 
The Senate conferees were unanimous in fixing the sal- 
ary at $7,500, and cutting off all allowances except ac- 
tual individual travelling expenses of a member from his 
home to Washington and back once a session, and cutting 
off all other allowances of every kind. That proposition 
was agreed to by a majority of the conferees on the part 
of the House. I was opposed to the increase in confer- 
ence as I have been opposed to it in the discussion and in 
my votes here, but my associate conferees were in favor 
of the Senate amendment, and I was compelled to choose 
between signing the report and running the risk of bring- 

14 



210 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

ing on an extra session of Congress. I have signed the 
report, and I present it as it is, and ask the House to act 
on it in accordance with their best judgment. 

'' Mr. Hibbard, of New Hampshire, said : I desire to 
ask the gentleman how much plunder will be taken from 
the treasury if this raising of salaries is adopted ? 

" Mr. Garfield. — I am glad the gentleman has asked 
me that question. The report presented here, taking into 
account the changes made with reference to the salaries of 
members and officers of both Houses and other increases 
of salaries in this bill, will, according to the best estimate 
I have been able to make, involve an annual increase of 
about three-quarters of a million of dollars. 

" Mr. Hibbard. — How much for the present Congress ? 

" Mr. Garfield. — For the present Congress it involves 
an additional expenditure of about one and a quarter mil- 
lion. I think the House ought to know all the facts." 

On the final passage of the bill Gen. Garfield voted for 
it, for the same reasons that induced him to sustain the 
report of the committee of conference. He was sharply 
criticised for his course, for the measure proved one of 
the most objectionable to the country ever adopted by 
Congress. While satisfied of the propriety of his conduct, 
General Garfield was yet sensitive to the criticisms upon 
him. He wrote to a friend as follows in relation to his 
conduct : 

" Hiram, Ohio, April 31, 1873. 

" Dear Friend : — Your kind and welcome letter of the 
11th instant came duly to hand, for which I thank you. 
When I went into the army I did so expecting to follow 
the path of duty, whether it led me to life or death. In 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 211 

entering Congress I undertook to follow the path of duty 
there, whether it led to political life or political death. I 
have cast many thousands of votes during my ten years 
of service, and none with a more conscientious conviction 
that I was doing right than the one for which I am so much 
blamed. Perhaps the people will never so understand it, 
but I believe most of them will some day. They may think 
I made a mistake, and they may be right about it. But I 
am sure that fair-minded men, when they fully understand 
the case, will see that I acted from worthy motives, and 
tried to do my duty. I have addressed a letter to the 
district, which will appear in this week's paper. They 
will see that I did all I could to keep the salary clause off 
from my bill, and when that effort failed I did what I 
could to reduce the amount appropriated, and that by 
standing by the bill I saved the treasury several hundred 
thousand dollars. 

" In 1856, Mr. Giddings voted for a large increase of 
pay of members of Congress, and the pay then dated back 
sixteen months. It passed the House then by one ma- 
jority, and Mr. Giddings' vote turned the scale. It was 
not a part of an appropriation bill, but stood alone on its 
own merits. Mr. Giddings was not censured, but was, 
that same fall, renominated and re-elected. They did not 
call him a thief nor a robber ; now they call me both, 
when I did more than any other member to prevent the 
increase of salaries. I believe that, in the long run, the 
people will be just. As ever, your friend, 

" J. A. Garfield." 

By the terms of the salary bill General Garfield was 



212 JAMES A. GARFIELD: 

entitled to $5,000 back pay as a member of the House. 
He drew the amount, but as his ideas of duty would not 
permit him to appropriate it to his own use, he promptly 
paid it back into the treasury of the United States. 
Shortly after the nomination of General Garfield for the 
Presidency, some of his political opponents declared that 
while he had not used his back pay for his own wants, he 
had made a present of it to Hiram College. With regard 
to this a Cleveland reporter called upon Professor B. A. 
Hinsdale, the President of Hiram College, and said to 
him: 

" I understand that a story is being told in certain 
sections that General Garfield made a proposition to Hi- 
ram College, viz., that he would draw from the United 
States Treasury the $5,000 due him by the back salary 
grab, and give it to the college, providing the trustees 
were willing to accept it. Now, President Hinsdale, what 
are the facts in the case concerning this ?" 

Mr. Hinsdale answered with considerable vehemence : 
"I have received several letters of inquiry concerning 
this matter. I have answered all inquiries with a point- 
blank denial. General Garfield never made any such 
proposition to me or to anybody else connected with Hi- 
ram College. The story is false as a whole, in all its 
particulars, in its inception, and in its spirit. I wrote to 
Mr. Davis if there was a man in Salem who professed to 
have been present at this fictitious presentation scene, 
he would please say to said man for me that there is 
not a word of truth in the story he is telling ; that he 
was never present at any such scene ; that there never 
was any such scene; and that he would also tell him 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 213 

that he had better find some better trade than that of 
slander." 

The case was so clear and the proofs so convenient to 
produce, that General Garfield had no trouble in refuting 
this slander. 

The first session of the forty-third Congress com- 
menced on the 1st of December, 1873. On the 8th of 
December a special committee reported a bill to the House 
to repeal the increase of certain salaries, adopted March 3, 
1873, and to restore the former rates, to wit, for members 
of Congress, etc. On December 9th the bill was con- 
sidered. 

" Mr. Wilson, of Indiana, said : Mr. Speaker, the sub- 
ject now under consideration is one which has attracted 
much public attention. The action of the forty-second 
Congress, in passing the act by which the salaries of sen- 
ators and representatives were increased, which it is now 
proposed to repeal, and especially that feature of it where- 
by increased pay was made to date from the beginning of 
the Congress, has met with the fiercest denunciation. Not 
only those who voted for it, but those who voted against 
it, yet received its benefits, have been stigmatized as 
thieves and robbers. 

" It matters not how many years of faithful service 
had been devoted to the country, nor how exalted a char- 
acter for integrity had been builded up, this one act has 
been deemed an unpardonable sin, and treated as an un- 
mitigated criminality. While indulging in this wholesale 
denunciation, no one stopped to consider the circumstances 
under which any member happened to be placed, and 
which to him, and to any reasonable man, might seem to 



214 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

make it his duty to vote for the measure ; no difference 
of opinion was permitted as to its justice ; no appeal to 
reason would be listened to. My distinguished friend 
from Ohio (Mr. Garfield), who struggled against it until, 
in a conference report which he had resisted to the last, 
it was brought before the House attached to one of the 
most important appropriation bills, and then, as all of us 
who are familiar with the facts must confidently believe 
(and it is but justice to him to say so here), voted for it 
in the conscientious discharge of his duty to the country, 
has fared no better than any one else." 

After some lengthy remarks by other members, Mr. 
Garfield said : 

" Mr. Speaker, there was so much to admire in the 
speech to which the House has just listened, that it may 
seem ungracious to say anything in conflict with the doc- 
trines announced. And yet the distinguished gentleman 
(Mr. Stephens, of Georgia) has said some things so strik- 
ingly diflerent from the views generally entertained by 
the American people, that I venture to offer a few sugges- 
tions by way of reply, while the subject is still fresh in 
the minds of his hearers. 

"All that the gentleman said in regard to the rela- 
tion of pubhc opinion to representative men will, I pre- 
sume, be cordially concurred in by those who heard him. 
The real leaders of the people — they who give voice to the 
best thoughts or aspirations of their countrymen — are im- 
measurably above those who consult public passion only 
to cater to its worst tendencies. It is a high and worthy 
work to study public opinion, for the purpose of learning 
how best to serve the public good ; but to study to learu 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 215 

how best to serve ourselves is base. But it is important 
that -we understand what we mean by public opinion. It 
is not an infallible standard of right, for it is sometimes 
wholly wrong. Its judgments are frequently rervised 
and reversed by its own consent. But it is true that, 
after a full hearing, public opinion finally adjusts itself 
on a basis which will be practically just and true. He 
greatly errs who calls all the passing and changing words 
of the public mind the fixed and final verdict of public 
judgment. 

" The public opinion that teaches its most valuable 
and impressive lessons resembles the ocean — not when 
lashed by the breath of the tempest — but when seen in 
the grandeur of its all-pervading calm. The men who 
shall take the dash and roar of its wild waves on the 
rocks as their symbol of public opinion will not only fail to 
learn its best lessons, but may find themselves wrecked on 
its breakers. But the sea in its hour of calm, when the 
forces that play upon it are in equipoise — when its depths 
are unvexed by tempests — is the grand level by which all 
the heights and depths of the world are measured. And 
so public opinion, though it may at times dash itself in 
fury against events and against men, will at last settle 
down into broad and settled calm, and will mark the level 
on which we gauge our political institutions, and measure 
the strength and wisdom of opinions and men. 

" While recognizing thus, the general justness and 
the almost omnipotent power of public opinion in a gov- 
ernment like ours, it is equally important that the indi- 
vidual man should not be the servile and unquestioning 
follower of its behests. We may value it as a guide, 



216 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

we may accept its lessons, but we should never be its 
slaves. 

" There is a circle of individual right within which 
every man's opinions are sacredly his own, even in defi- 
ance of public opinion, and which his manhood and self- 
respect demand that he shall never surrender. But there 
are public questions like that which we are to-day consid- 
ering, on which the voice of public opinion has a right to 
be heard and considered by every representative in the 
n^ional legislature. 

" Now, if we were legislating for the ideal republic of 
Plato, I do not know that a wiser plan of compensation 
could be found than that proposed by the distinguished 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Stephens). If we lived in 
a world where the highest power was the best paid, his 
scheme would be perfect, and his argument unanswerable. 
But, so far as I have studied life, exactly the reverse is 
the accepted rule. The things that have the highest 
marketable value in the world, as we find it, are not the 
things that stand highest in the intellectual or moral 
scale. 

" One of the brightest and perhaps greatest men I 
know in this nation, a man who, perhaps, has done as 
much for its intellectual life as any other, told me, not 
many months ago, that he had made it the rule of his life 
to abandon any intellectual pursuit the moment it be- 
came commercially valuable ; that others would utilize 
what he had discovered ; that his field of work was 
above the line of commercial values ; and when he 
brought down the great truths of science from the upper 
heights to the level of commercial values, a thousand 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 



217 



i 



hands would be ready to take them and make them val- 
uable in the markets of the world. 

" A voice — ' Who was he ?' 

" Mr. Garfield. — It was Agassiz. He entered upon his 
great career, not for the salary it gave him, for that was 
meagre compared with the pay of those in the lower walks 
of life ; but he followed the promptings of his great na- 
ture, and works for the love of the truth, and for the in- 
struction of mankind. Something of this spirit pervaded 
the lives of the great men who did so much to build up 
and maintain our Republican institutions. And this spirit 
is, in my judgment, higher and worthier than that which 
the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Stephens) has described. 

" To come immedintely to the question before us, I 
agree with the distinguished gentleman that we should 
not be driven or swayed by that unjust clamor that calls 
men thieves who voted as they had the constitutional 
righ"t to vote, and accepted a compensation which they 
had the legal and constitutional right to take. I join in 
no clamor of that sort ; nor will I join in any criminations 
against those who used their right to act and vote differ- 
ently from myself on this subject. It is idle to waste 
our time now in discussing the votes of the last Congress 
in relation to the Salary Bill. We are called upon to 
confront this plain, practical question, ' Shall the Salary 
Bill of the last Congress be repealed ?' I shall argue it 
on two grounds : first, the just demands of public opin- 
ion ; second, the relation of this repeal to the Govern- 
ment and its necessities ; and I shall confine my remarks 
to these two points. I think it cannot be doubted that 
public opinion plainly and clearly demands the repeal; 



218 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

and on a subject like this, the voice of the people should 
have more than ever its usual weight. 

" When the public says to me, and to those associated 
with me, that we have under constitutional law given 
ourselves more pay than that public is willing to grant 
us, it would be indelicate and indecent in us on such a 
question to resist that public opinion. 

" It does not compromise the manhood, the indepen- 
dence, or the self-respect of any representative to say 
that he will not help to keep on the statute book a law 
which allows him more pay than public opinion thinks he 
ought to have. Even if he believes public opinion wrong, 
he ought to yield to it in a matter of such delicacy. 

" That is all the argument I make on the score of 
public opinion. 

" I now come to the other point, the necessities of 
the Government. Gentlemen must remember that only 
seven years ago our expenditures had risen to a vol- 
ume that was simply frightful, in view of the burdens 
of the country. We were then paying out over the 
counter of our treasury $1,290,000,000 a year as the 
cost of sustaining the Government and meeting the great 
expenses entailed by the war. What was the duty of 
this national legislature ? Manifestly to bring the ex- 
penses of the Government down as rapidly as possibly 
from the high level of war to the normal level of peace. 

"If, therefore, the forty-third Congress intends to go 
forward in the work of economy and retrenchment, if 
it has any hope of making further reductions in the ex- 
penditures of this Government, we must, before under- 
taking to carry out that work, give ourselves the moral 



HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 219 

power that will result from a reduction of our own pay 
to the old standard. As the case stands to-day, our own 
sahiries are the master key in our hands by which alone 
we can turn the machinery that will bring about a 
furtlier reduction of expenses in the Government. 

" Mr. Speaker, I say all this on the theory that we 
are to run the Government as our fathers who made it 
intended it should be run — not on the principle of the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Stephens), a principle 
that would make this the most expensive government on 
the globe, but on the old principle that there is some- 
thing due to the honor of the service we perform." 



CHAPTER YIL 

GENERAL GARFIELD LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION IS 

ELECTED TO THE SENATE. 

Eflfbrts to defeat General Garfield for Congress — His triumphant Re-election 
— The Democrats have a Majority in the House — Garfield loses his Chair- 
manship—One of the Republican Leaders — A sharp Arraignment of the 
Democratic Party — The Democratic Graveyard— Ohio goes Republican — 
General Garfield nominated for United States Senator — Is the Republi- 
can Candidate for Speaker of the House — A Member of two important 
Committees — Becomes the Republican Leader in the House — Garfield 
pours a Broadside into the Democratic Ranks — A Withering Denunciation 
of Democratic Policy — Reply to Mr. Tucker, of Virginia — Garfield breaks 
the Democratic Line — Delight of the Republicans in the House — Com- 
ments of the New York Herald— Appeal in behalf of the Loyal Men of 
the South — Speech on the Judicial Expenses Bill — Speech at Madison, 
Wisconsin — Speech at the Andersonville Re-union — Plain Talking on a 
Sad Subject— General Garfield is Elected to the United States Senate— 
His Arrival at Columbus — Reception at the Capital — His Remarks — Ad- 
dress of President Hinsdale on Garfield's Election — Speech of General 
Garfield on Democratic Nullification. 

In the elections of 1874, the Republican party suffered 
heavy reverses in the Congressional districts. The re- 
sult was that a Democratic majority was returned to the 
House of Representatives. General Garfield was renom- 
inated by his district, receiving nearly every vote in 
the Convention, but at the polls a determined effort was 
made by the Democrats to defeat him. Plis vote was 
cut down from 19,189 in 1872, to 12,591, and an Inde- 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 221 

pendent Republican polled 3,427 votes ; but Garfield 
still had a plurality of 6,346 over his Democratic an- 
tagonist, and a clear majority of 2,919 over all opposi- 
tion. 

The preponderance of the Democratic party in the 
House, of course, gave them the speakership and the con- 
trol of all the committees. General Garfield was removed 
from the chairmanship of the Committee on Appropria- 
tions, and was made the second Republican member of 
the Committee of Ways and Means. He rendered good 
service to his party and the country in this position, and 
by his boldness and brilliancy made himself regarded as 
one of the ablest leaders of the Republican minority in 
the House. In this respect he ranked next in the popu- 
lar estimation to Mr. Blaine, of Maine, to whom the lead- 
ership of the party was conceded — surpassing him, indeed, 
in many things. He held his position on the Committee 
of Ways and Means for four years. 

In 1876 General Garfield was again returned to Con- 
gress by a handsome majority. He had become so use- 
ful to his party that his nomination and election were 
now a matter of certainty. He ably maintained his great 
reputation as a speaker, as the following extract from 
one of his speeches delivered in the House on the 4th 

k of August, 1876, will show : 
" Mr. Chairman. — It is now time to inquire as to the 
fitness of this Democratic party to take control of our 
great nation and its vast and important interests for the 
next four years. I put the question to the gentleman 
from Mississippi (Mr. Lamar). What has the Demo- 
r — "-"■ ■■"• 



222 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

show in what respects it would not be dangerous. I ask 
him to show in what it would be safe. 

" I affirm, and I believe I do not misrepresent the 
great Democratic party, that in the last sixteen years 
they have not advanced one great national idea that is 
not to-day exploded and as dead as Julius Caesar. And 
if any Democrat here will rise and name a great national 
doctrine his party has advanced, within that time, that 
is now alive and believed in, I will yield to him. (A 
pause.) In default of an answer, I will attempt to prove 
my negative. 

" What were the great central doctrines of the 
Democratic party in the Presidential struggle of 1860 ? 
The followers of Breckinridge said slavery had a right 
to go wherever the Constitution goes. Do you believe 
that to-day ? And is there a man on this continent that 
holds that doctrine to-day? Not one. That doctrine 
is dead and buried. The other wing of the Democracy 
held that slavery might be established in the Territories 
if the people wanted it. Does anybody hold that doc- 
trine to-day ? Dead, absolutely dead ! 

" Come down to 1864. Your party, under the lead 
of Tilden and Vallandigham, declared the experiment of 
war to save the Union was a failure. Do you believe 
in that doctrine to-day? That doctrine was shot to 
death by the guns of Farragut at Mobile, and driven, 
in a tempest of fire, from the valley of the Shenan- 
doah by Sheridan, less than a month after its birth at 
Chicago. 

"Come down to 1868. You declared the constitu- 
tional amendments revolutionary and void. Does any 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 223 

man on this floor say so to-day ? If so, let him rise and 
declare it. 

" Do you believe in the doctrine of the Broadhead 
letter of 1868, that the so-called constitutional amend- 
ments should be disregarded ? No ; the gentleman from 
Mississippi accepts the results of the war ! The Demo- 
cratic doctrine of 1868 is dead ! 

" I walk across that Democratic camping ground as 
in a graveyard. Under my feet resound the hollow 
echoes of the dead. There lies Slavery, a black marble 
column at the head of its grave, on which I read : * Died 
in the flames of the Civil War : loved in its life ; la- 
mented in its death; followed to its bier by its only 
mourner, the Democratic party, but dead ! ' And here 
is a double grave ; * Sacred to the memory of Squatter 
Sovereignty. Died in the Campaign of I860.' On the 
reverse side ; ' Sacred to the memory of Dred Scott and 
the Breckinridge doctrine. Both dead at the hands of 
Abraham Lincoln ! ' And here a monument of brim- 
stone ; ' Sacred to the memory of the Rebellion : the 
War against.it is a failure; Tilden et Vallandigham — 
fecerunt, a. d. 1864. Dead on the field of battle; shot 
to death by the million guns of the Republic. The doc- 
trine of Secession, of State Sovereignty, dead ! Expired 
in the flames of civil war, amid the blazing rafters of 
the Confederacy, except that the modern ^neas, flee- 
ing out of the flames of that ruin, bears on his back 
another Anchises of State sovereignty, and brings it 
here in the person of the honorable gentleman from the 
Appomattox district of Virginia (Mr. Tucker). All else 
is dead ! 



224 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

"Now, gentlemen, are you sad, are you sorry for 
these deaths ? Are you not glad that Secession is dead ? 
that Squatter Sovereignty is dead ? that the doctrine of 
tlie failure of the War is dead ? Then you are glad 
that you were outrvoted in 1860, in 1864, in 1868, and 
in 1872. If you have tears to shed over these losses, 
shed them in the graveyard, but not in this House of 
living men. I know that many a Southern man re- 
joices that these issues are dead. The gentleman from 
Mississippi (Mr. Lamar) has clothed his joy with elo- 
quence. 

" Now, gentlemen, if you yourselves are glad that 
you have suffered defeat during the last sixteen years, 
will you not be equally glad when you suffer defeat next 
November ? But pardon that remark. I regret it ; I 
should use no bravado. 

" Now, gentlemen, come with me for a moment into 
the camp of the Republican party and review its career. 
Our central doctrine in 1860 was that slavery should 
never extend itself over another foot of American soil. 
Is that doctrine dead ? It is folded away like a victo- 
rious banner ; its truth is alive for evermore on this conti- 
nent. In 1864 we declared that we would put down the 
rebellion and secession. And that doctrine lives, and will 
live when the second centennial has arrived. Freedom, 
national, universal and perpetual — our great constitutional 
amendments, are they alive or dead? Alive, thank the 
God that shields both liberty and union. And our 
national credit ! saved from the assaults of Pendleton j 
saved from the assaults of those who struck it later, rising 
higher and higher at home and abroad; and only now in 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 225 

doubt lest its chief, its only enemy, the Democracy, should 
triumph in November." 

General Garfield took an active part in the memorable 
campaign of 1877, which did much to restore the State 
of Ohio to the Republican party. In the early part of 
the year he was a candidate for the office of United States 
Senator from Ohio, to succeed the Hon. John Sherman, 
who had accepted the secretaryship of the Treasury in 
the cabinet of President Hayes. He withdrew from the 
contest, however, at the special request of President 
Hayes, who assured him he could be of more service to 
the administration as a member of the House than as a 
senator. Mr. Blaine had been elected to the Senate, an4 
General Garfield was now the formally recognized leader 
of the Republican party in the House. He held this 
position for several years, displaying in it all his old 
vigor and boldness, and the sound qualities of leadership 
that induced the Republican party to nominate him for 
the Presidency. 

At the meeting of the forty-fifth Congress in 1877, 
General Garfield was the Republican candidate for 
Speaker of the House, and received the full vote of his 
party. The Democrats being so largely in the ma^ 
jority, the Republican nomination and the vote upon it 
were merely complimentary. Hon. Samuel J. Ran- 
dall, of Pennsylvania, was elected Speaker by, the Dem- 
ocrats. 

In 1878 General Garfield was again elected to Con- 
gress by a handsome majority. 

In the same year, when the Democrats controlled the 
Legislature of Ohio, General Garfield was a candidate for 



226 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the complimentary vote of his party for United States 
Senator ; but after a prolonged and hitter contest in the 
caucus, his name was withdrawn, and it was resolved to 
cast only blank votes in the two Houses. 

The forty-sixth Congress met in extra session on 
the 18th of March, 1879. General Garfield was nomi- 
nated by the Republicans for Speaker of the House, and 
received one hundred and twenty-five votes, but the 
Democratic majority reseated Speaker Randall. The 
Speaker, in reorganizing the standing committees of the 
House, placed General Garfield at the head of the Re- 
publican membership of the Committee of Ways and 
Means. He also appointed him one of the committee 
charged with revising the rules of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, thus paying a high and deserved compliment 
to General Garfield's rare knowledge of parliamentary 
law. 

General Garfield was the acknowledged leader of the 
Republican side of the House during this session. He 
held the Democracy to a strict accountability in forcing 
the extra session upon the country, and denounced their 
course in withholding the supplies of the Government in 
order to force upon it an acceptance of their schemes for 
removing the safeguards that had been thrown around 
the ballot box, which measures he declared were unpa- 
triotic and dangerous. On the 29th of March, 1879, he 
made his great eifort. The House went into Committee 
of the Whole, Mr. Springer, of Illinois, in the chair, on 
the .Arniy Appropriation Rill. 

"Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, obtained the floor, and 
proceeded to speak in .a clear voice. He did not desire 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 227 

to say much outside of the pending point of order. The 
section against which that point had been raised was 
clearly germane to the bill. All laws penal in their char- 
acter were to be construed strictly, but laws involving 
I questions of public right, public liberty, and public policy 
' were to be liberally construed — not strictly. The gentle- 
man from Maine (Mr. Frye) had said that the section 
did not, on its face, retrench expenditures. That was 
not the question. The question was, ' Would it probably 
It retrench expenditures ? ' He thought it would, and not 
' only possibly or probably, but certainly. The past his- 
tory of the country showed that enormous expenditures 
had attended the use of troops at elections. He went on 
to argue that the acts of 1795 and 1817 only authorized 
the use of the troops to put down domestic insurrectionv 
The provision for the use of troops for civil purposes was 
an entirely different matter. The law authorizing the 
use of troops at the polls had never any existence until 
1865, and the danger of such a law would not, he pre- 
sumed, be denied by anybody. If there was any man 
on the floor who was in favor of peaceable elections and 
order throughout the length and breadth of the land he 
(Mr. Stephens) professed to be equally strong with him 
in that feeling. He was for law and order. He had wit- 
nessed the soldier at the polls, and had seen no good of 
it. The country had got along three-fourths of a century 
without having troops at the polls, and the sentiment of 
the people was as much against their presence there now 
as it had ever been. The future harmony, order, and 
prosperity of the country would be greatly promoted by 
hereafter adhering to the principles and precepts of the 



228 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

fathers of the Republic. Congress had a right to raise 
armies and to designate the purpose for which they 
should be used ; and the President's right to control and 
direct their movements was clearly an executive one, 
with which Congress had no power to interfere. But it 
could say that the executive could not use such forces 
for a particular purpose. It had a right (which he did 
not think the executive would deny) to say that the 
military should not be used at the polls. Let the land 
forces be devoted to protecting the frontier. Let the 
navy be afloat on the sea, protecting the country's flag 
and commerce. Let each be in the sphere to which it 
was entitled, in which, in the past, it had won such honor 
and glory for the common country. Let them perform 
their duties, and let the civil administration of the coun- 
try go on in its own channel. Let members of Congress 
be returned as heretofore, and if any man was defrauded 
of his right, then let the high court of the country, the 
House of Representatives, decide that question, and not 
the bayonet of the soldier. 



REVOLUTIONARY DECISION OF THE CHAIR. 

" The Chairman then proceeded to rule on the point 
of order, which he did by declaring the section to be 
in order, both on the ground of its being germane and of 
its retrenching expenditure. There could scarcely be a 
doubt as to its being germane, for it related to the duties 
of the army, or rather to the uses to which the army may 
be put. * Germane ' did not mean synonymous, but meant 
something near akin, closely allied, relevant to the sub- 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 229 

ject. As to the question of retrenching expenditures, 
he referred to the official estimates and to appropriations 
heretofore made to show how much money had been ex- 
pended for transportation and other expenses attending 
the use of the troops at the polls. The ending section 
proposed to retrench such expenditures for the future. 
For these and other reasons the point of order was over- 
ruled. 

" Mr. Conger (Rep.), of Michigan, appealed from the 
decision of the chair, and the decision was sustained — 
yeas 125, nays 107. 

"Mr. New (Rep.), of Indiana, offered an amendment 
providing that nothing contained in the section should be 
held to abridge or affect the duty or power of the Presi- 
dent under the fourth article of the Constitution to send 
troops into States on the application of the legislature or 
executive. 

" The amendment was allowed to stand over for the 
present. 

MR. GARFIELD'S SPEECH. 
" Mr. Garfield (Rep.), of Ohio, then took the floor. 
He commenced his speech by referring to the gravity and 
solemnity of the crisis that had now been brought upon 
the country, and declared that the House had, to-day, re- 
solved to enter upon a revolution against the Constitution 
and the Government j and that the consequence of that 
resolve, if persisted in, meant nothing short of subversion 
of the Government. He sketched the point at issue be- 
tween the two Houses at the close of the last Congress, 
and read from a report of one of the Senate conferees to 



230 JAMES A. GARFIELD. , 

the effect that the Democratic conferees on the part of the 
House were determined, unless the action of the House 
was concurred in, to refuse making appropriations to carry 
on the Government, and he also quoted from the speech 
of Senator Beck (another of the conferees) to the effect 
that the Democrats claimed the right which the House 
of Commons in England had established, after two centu- 
ries of conquest, to say they would not grant the money 
of the people unless there was a redress of grievances. 
These propositions, continued Mr. Garfield, in various 
forms, more or less vehemently, were repeated in the last 
House, and with that situation of affairs the session came 
near its close. The Republican majority in the Senate, 
and the Republican minority in the House, expressed the 
deepest possible solicitude to avoid the catastrophe here 
threatened. They expressed their strongest desire to 
avoid the danger to the country and to its business of an 
extra session of Congress, and they expressed their wil- 
lingness to let go what they considered the least impor- 
tant of the propositions — not as a matter of coercion at 
all, but as a matter of fair adjustment and compromise, if 
they could be met in the spirit of adjustment on the other 
side. Unfortunately, no spirit of adjustment appeared on 
the other side to meet their advances. And now the new 
Congress is assembled, and after ten days of deliberation 
the House of Representatives has resolved substantially 
to reaffirm the propositions of its predecessor, and on these 
propositions we are met to-day. This is no time to enter 
into all this case. I am not prepared for it myself. But 
I shall confine myself to the one phase of the issue pre- 
sented in this bilk 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 231 

DRAWING THE LINES. 

"Mr. Atkens (Dem.), of Ten., asked Mr. Garfield 
whether he understood him to state that there had been no 
proposition to compromise made in Conference Committee. 

" Mr. Garfield replied that he did not undertake to 
state what had been said in the Conference Committee, 
for he had not been a member of the Conference. He had 
been only stating what had been stated on the floor of the 
House and of the Senate. 

" Mr. Atkins. — Then I state that a proposition was 
made in the Conference Committee the same as the prop- 
osition now before the House, and which is proposed to 
be attached to this bill. 

" Mr. Garfield. — I take it for granted that what my 
friend says is strictly true. I know nothing to the con- 
trary. The question may be asked why we make any 
special resistance to propositions which a great many gen- 
tlemen have declared are to be considered of no impor- 
tance. So far as this side is concerned I desire to say 
this : We recognize you, gentlemen of the other side, as 
skilful parliamentarians and skilful strategists ; you have 
chosen wisely and adroitly your line of assault ; you have 
put forward perhaps the least objectionable of your meas- 
ures, but we meet that as one part of your programme. 
We reply to it as an order of battle, and we are as much 
compelled by the logic of the situation to meet you on the 
skirmish line as we would be if you were attacking the 
intrenchments themselves. And, therefore, on the thresh- 
old, we desire to plant our case on the general grounds on 
which we choose to defend it. 



232 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

THE FEEBLEST GOVERNMENT ON EARTH. 
" Mr. Garfield then went on to refer to what he had 
stated on the last day of the last Congress, as to the 
division of the government into three parts — the nation, 
the Senate, and the people ; and he said that, looking 
at the government as a foreigner might look upon it, 
it might be said to be the feeblest government on the 
earth, while looking at it as American citizens did, it 
was the mightiest government. A foreigner could point 
out a dozen ways in which the government could be 
killed, and that not by violence. Of course all govern- 
ments might be overturned by the sword. But there 
was some ways by which this government might be ut- 
terly annihilated without the firing of a gun. The 
people might say that they would not elect representa- 
tives. That, of course, was a violent supposition, but 
there was no possible remedy for such a condition of 
things, and without a House of Representatives there 
could be no support of a government, and, consequently, 
there could be no government ; so the States might say 
through their legislatures, that they would not elect 
senators. The very abstention from electing senators 
would absolutely destroy the government, and there 
would be no process of compulsion. Or, supposing that 
the two Houses were assembled in their usual order, and 
that a bare majority of one in either House should firmly 
bind itself together and say that it would vote to adjourn 
at the moment of meeting each day, and would do that 
for two years in succession — in that case what would 
happen and what would be the measure of redress ? 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 233 

The government would die. There could not be found 
in the whole range of judicial or executive authority 
any remedy whatever. The power of a member of the 
House to vote was free, and he might vote * no ' on every 
proposition of that kind. It was not so with the ex- 
ecutive. The executive had no power to destroy the 
government. Let the executive travel but one inch 
beyond the line of law and there was the power of im- 
peachment. But if the electors among the people who 
elected representatives, or if the electors in the State 
legislatures who created senators, or if senators and 
representatives themselves abstain from the perform- 
ance of their duty, there was no remedy. 

WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANT. 
"At a first view it might seem remarkable that a 
body of wise men hke those who framed the Constitution 
should have left the whole side of the fabric of govern- 
ment open to those deadly assaults, but on another view 
of the case they were wise. "What was their reliance ? 
It was on the sovereignty of the nation, on the crowned 
and anointed sovereign to whom all American citizens 
owed their allegiance. That sovereign was the body of 
the people of the United States, inspired by their love of 
country and their sense of obligation to public duty. As 
the originators of the forces that were sent to Congress to 
do their work they had no need of any coercive authority 
to be laid on them to compel them to do their manifest 
duty. Public opinion, the level of that mighty ocean 
from which all heights and all depths were measured, 
7'ds deemed a sufficient measure to guard that side of the 



234 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

constitution and those approacliea to the life of the na- 
tion, absolutely from all danger, all harm. Up to this 
hour our sovereign has never failed us. There has never 
been such abstention from the exercise of those primary 
functions of sovereignty, as either to cripple or endanger 
the government. And now, for the first time in our 
history, and I will say for the first time in at least 
two centuries in the history of English-speaking people, 
has it been proposed, or at least insisted upon, that these 
voluntary powers shall be used for the destruction of 
the government. I want it understood that the propo- 
sition which I have read, and which is the programme 
announced to the American people to-day, is, this day, 
that if we cannot have our way in a certain manner, we 
will destroy the government of this country by using the 
voluntary power not of the people, but of ourselves, 
against the government to destroy it. What is our 
theory of law ? It is free consent. That is the gran- 
ite foundation of our whole structure. Nothing in this 
Republic can be a law that has not a free consent of 
the House, the free consent of the Senate, and the free 
consent of the executive. Or if the executive refuses* 
his free consent, then it must have the free consent of 
two-thirds of each body. Will anybody deny that? 
Will anybody challenge a line of that statement — that 
free consent is the foundation rock of all our institutions ? 

THREATS TO STOP THE GOVERNMENT. 
"And yet the programme announced two weeks ago 
was, that if the Senate refused to consent to the demand 
of the House the government should stop. The proposi- 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 235 

tion was then, and the programme is now, that although 
there is not a Senate to veto it, there is still a third 
independent factor in the legislative power of the govern- 
ment which is to be coerced at the peril of the destruc- 
tion of the government. It makes no difference what 
your issue is. If it were the simplest and most inoffen- 
sive proposition in the world, yet if you demand as a 
matter of coercion that it shall be put in, every fair- 
minded Republican in America would be bound to resist 
it as much as though his own life depended on his re- 
sistance. I am not arguing as to the merits of your 
three amendments at all : I am speaking of our methods, 
and I say that they are against the constitution of our 
country. I say that they are revolutionary to the core, 
and that they tend to the destruction of the first ele- 
ment of American liberty, which is free consent of all 
the powers that unite to make the law, I ask anybody 
to take up my challenge and to show me where hitherto 
this consent has been coerced as a condition precedent 
to the support of the government. It is a little surpris- 
ing to me that our friends on the other side should have 
gone into this great contest on so slender a topic as the 
one embraced in this particular bill. Victor Hugo said, 
in his description of the great Battle of Waterloo, that 
two armies were like two mighty giants, and that some- 
times a chip under the heel of one might determine the 
victory. It may be, gentlemen, that there is merely a 
chip under your heel, or it may be that you treated it 
as a chip on our shoulder. But whether it is under 
your heel or on our shoulder it represents a matter of 
revolution, and we fight for the chip as if it were an 



236 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ingot of tho richest ore. [Loud applause on the floor 
and in the galleries.] 

A POINT FOR DEMOCRATIC MEMBERS. 
" Let us see what the chip is. Do the gentlemen know 
what they ask when thej ask us to repeal ? Who made 
this law which you now demand to have repealed in this 
bill ? It was introduced into the Senate of the United 
States by a prominent Democrat from the State of Ken- 
tucky (Mr. Powell). It was insisted upon in an able 
and elaborate speech by him. It was reported against by 
a Republican committee in that body. It went through 
days and weeks of debate in the Senate, and when it 
finally came to be acted upon in that body this is about 
the way the vote ran : Every Democrat in the Senate 
voted for it, and every senator who voted against it was 
a Republican. No Democrat voted against it, but every 
Democratic senator voted for it. Who were they ? Mr. 
Hendricks, of Indiana; Mr. Davis, of Kentucky; Mr. 
Johnson, of Maryland ; Mr. McDougal, of California ; 
Mr. Powell, of Kentucky; Mr. Richardson, of Illinois, 
and Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware. There were fewer 
Republican senators who voted for it than there were who 
voted against it. Thirteen Republican senators voted 
against it and only ten for it. The bill then came over 
to the House and was put upon its passage here. And 
how did the vote stand in this body? Every Democrat 
in the House of Representatives voted for it — sixty of 
them. The total number of persons who voted for it in 
the House was about one hundred and thirteen, and of 
that number a majority were Democrats. The distin- 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 237" 

guished Speaker of the House, Samuel J. Randall, voted 
for it. The distinguished chairman of the Committee of 
Ways and Means (Fernando Wood) voted for it. A dis- 
tinguished member from Ohio, now a senator from that 
State (Mr; Pendleton) voted for it. Every man of 
leading name or fame in the Democratic party who was 
then in the Congress of the United States voted for the 
bill, and not one against it. In this House there were 
but few Republicans who voted against it. I was one of 
the few. Thaddeus Stephens voted against it. What 
was the object of the bill at that time ? It was this — it 
was alleged by Democrats that in those days of war there 
was interference with elections in the border States. 
There was no charge of any interference in the States 
where war did not exist. But lest there might be some 
infraction of the freedom of elections a large number of 
Republicans in Congress were unwilling to give any ap- 
pearance whatever of interfering with the freedom of 
elections, voted against this law as an expression of their 
purpose that the army should not be improperly used in 
and about any election. 

" Mr. Carlisle (Dem.) of Kentucky. — I want to ask 
if the Democrats in the Senate and the House did not 
vote for that proposition because it came in the form of a 
substitute for another proposition still more objectiona- 
ble to them ? 

" Mr. Garfield. — The gentleman is quite mistaken. The 
original bill was introduced by Senator Powell, of Ken- 
tucky. It was amended by several persons in its course 
through the Senate, but the vote I have given is the 
final vote. A Republican senator moved to reconsider it, 



2S8 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

hoping to kill the proposition, and for four or five days it 
was delayed. It was again passed, every Democrat vot- 
ing for it. In the House there was no debate, and there- 
fore no expression of the reason why anybody voted for it. 



STEPHENS IN A MERRY MOOD. 

" Mr. Stephens, of Georgia. — I wish to ask the gentle- 
man if the country is likely to be revolutionized and the 
Government destroyed by repealing a law that the gentle- 
man voted against? (Laughter on the Democratic side.) 

"Mr. Garfield. — I think not, sir. That is not the 
element of revolution that I have been discussing. The 
proposition now is that fourteen years have passed since 
the war, and not one petition from any American citizen 
has come to us asking that the law be repealed ; not one 
memorial has found its way to our desks, complaining of 
the law ; and now the Democratic House of Representa- 
tives hold that if they are not permitted to force on 
another House and the executive against their will and 
their consent, the repeal of a law that the Democrats made 
it shall be a sufficient ground for starving this Govern- 
ment. That is the proposition we are here debating. 

" Mr. Wood (Dem.), of New York. — Before the gentle- 
man leaves that part of the discussion, I desire to ask him 
whether he wishes to make the impression on this House 
that the bill introduced by Senator Powell, of Kentucky, 
which resulted finally in the law of 1865, was the bill 
that passed the Senate and the House which he stated 
that the present Speaker of the House and myself voted 
in favor of? 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 239 

"Mr. Garfield. — I have not intimated that there were 
no amendments. There were amendments, 

" Mr. Wood. — I want to correct the impression. I 
deny that, so far as I am personally concerned, I ever 
voted for the bill, except as a substitute for a more per- 
nicious and objectionable measure. [Applause on the 
Democratic side.] 

" Mr. Garfield. — All I say is a matter of record. What 
I say is that the gentleman voted for that law, and every 
Democrat in the Senate and in the House who voted at 
all voted for it. 

" Mr. Wood. — I want to ask the gentleman whether, 
in 1865, at the time of the passing of this law, the war had 
really yet subsided — whether there was not a portion of 
this country in a condition where it was impossible to 
exercise an elective franchise unless there was some kind 
of military interference ; and whether, at the expiration 
of fourteen years after the war has subsided, that gentle- 
man is yet prepared to continue a war measure in a time 
of profound peace in the country ? 



GOING BACK TO 1860. 

"Mr. Garfield. — I have no doubt that the patriotic 
gentleman from New York took all those things into consid- 
eration when he voted for that bill, and I may have been 
unpatriotic in voting against it ; but he and I must stand 
on our record as made up. Let it be understood that 1 
have not at all entered into the discussion of the merits 
of the case. I am discussing a method of revolution 
against the Constitution of the United States. I desire 



240 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

to ask the forbearance of the gentlemen on the other side 
for remarks that I dislike to make, for they will bear 
witness that I have in many ways shown my desire that 
the wounds of the war shall be healed and that the grass 
that God plants over the graves of our dead may signalize 
the return of the spring of friendship and peace between 
all parts of this country. But I am compelled by the 
necessity of the situation to refer for a moment to a chap- 
ter of history. The last act of the Democratic administra- 
tion in this House, eighteen years ago, was stirring and 
dramatic, but it was heroic and high-souled. Then the 
Democratic party said, ' If you elect your man as Presi- 
dent of the United States, we will shoot your Union to 
death ;' and the people of this country, not willing to be 
coerced, but believing that they had a right to vote for 
Abraham Lincoln if they chose, did elect him lawfully as 
President. And then your leaders in control of the major- 
ity of the other wing of this Capitol did the heroic thing 
of withdrawing from their seats, and your representatives 
withdrew from their seats and flung down to us the gage 
of mortal battle. We called it rebellion, but we admitted 
that it was honorable, that it was courageous, and that it 
was noble to give us the fell gage of battle and fight it 
out in the open field. That conflict and what followed 
we all know too well ; and to-day, after eighteen years, 
the book of your domination is opened where you turned 
down your leaves in 1860, and you are signalizing your 
return to power by reading the second chapter (not this 
time an heroic one), that declares that if we do not let you 
dash a statute out of the book, you will, not shoot the 
Union to death, as in the first chapter, but starve it to 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 241 

death by refusing the necessary appropriations. (Ap- 
plause on the Republican side.) You, gentlemen, have it 
in your power to kill this movement ; you have it in your 
power, by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve 
centres of our constitution to the stillness of death ; and 
you have declared your purpose to do it if you cannot 
break down the elements of free consent that up to this 
time have always ruled in the Government. 



SUPERCILIOUS CARPING. 

"Mr. Davis (Dem.), of North Carolina. — Do I under- 
stand the gentleman to state that refusal to admit the 
army at the polls will be the death of this government ? 
That is the logic of his remark if it means anything. 
We say it will be the preservation of the government to 
keep the army from destroying liberty at the polls. 

" Mr. Garfield. — I have too much respect for the intel- 
ligence of the gentleman from North Carolina to believe 
that he thinks that that was my argument. He does not 
say that he thinks so. On the contrary, I am sure that 
every clear-minded man knows that that was not my 
argument. My argument was this — that unless some 
independent branch of the legislative power against its 
will is forced to sign or vote what it does not consent to, 
it will use the power in its hands to starve the govern- 
ment to death. 

" Mr. Davis. — How does the gentleman assume that 
we are forcing some branch of the government to do 
what it does not wish to do ? How do we know that, 
or how does the gentleman know it ? 

16 



242 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" Mr. Garfield. — My reply to the gentleman is, that 
I read at the outset of my remarks the declaration of 
his party asserting that this is its programme. In 
1856, in Cincinnati, in the National Democratic Con- 
vention, and still later, in 1860, the national Democ- 
racy in the United States, affirmed the right of the 
veto as one of the sacred rights of our Government, and 
declared that any law which could not be passed over a 
veto had no right to become a law, and that the only 
redress was an appeal from the veto to the people at the 
next election. That has been the Democratic doctrine on 
that subject from the remotest day — certainly from Gen- 
eral Jackson's time until now. What would you have 
said in 1861 if the Democratic majority in the Senate, in- 
stead of taking the course which it did, had simply said : 
* We will put an amendment on an appropriation bill de- 
claring the right of any State to secede from the Union 
at pleasure, and forbidding any officer of the army or 
navy of the United States from interfering with any 
State in its purpose to secede ? ' Suppose the Demo- 
cratic majority had said then, * Put that on these appro- 
priation bills, or we will refuse supplies to the govern- 
ment.' Perhaps they could have killed the government 
then by starvation. But in the madness of that hour the 
secession government did not dream that it would be 
honorable to put their fight on that ground, but they 
walked out on their plan of battle and fought it out. 
But now, in a way which the wildest of secessionists 
never dreamed of taking, it is proposed to make this new 
assault on the vitals of the nation. 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 243 



A EEPUBLICAN CHALLENGE. 
" Gentlemen (addressing the Democratic side of the 
House), we have tried to count the cost. We did try to 
count it in 1861 before we picked up ihe gage of battle ; 
and although no man could then forecast the awful loss 
in blood and treasure, yet having started in we staid 
there to victory. We simply made the appeal to our 
sovereign, to that great omnipotent public opinion in 
America, to determine whether the Union should be shot 
to death. And now lawfully in our right hand, in. our 
place here, we pick up the gage of battle which you have 
thrown down, and will appeal to our common sovereign 
to say whether you shall break down the principle of 
free consent in legislation at the price of starving the 
government to death. We are ready to pass these bills 
for the support of the government at any hour when you 
will offer them in the ordinary way, and if you offer 
these other measures as separate measures, we will 
meet you in the spirit of Mr and fraternal debate. But 
you shall not compel us — you shall not coerce us — even 
to save this government, until the question has gone to 
the sovereign to determine whether it will consent to 
break down any of its voluntary powers. And on that 
ground, gentlemen, we plant ourselves. (Loud applause 
on the Republican side and in the galleries.) We remind 
you, in conclusion, that this great zeal of yours in regard 
to keeping the officers of the government out of the 
States has not been always yours. I remember that 
only six years before the war your law authorized mar- 
shals of the United States to go through all our house- 



244 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

holds and hunt for fugitive slaves. It did not only that, 
but it empowered marshals to call for a posse-comitatus 
and to call upon all the bystanders to join in the chase, 
and your Democratic attorney-general declared in an 
opinion, in 1854, that a marshal of the United States 
might call to his aid the whole posse, including soldiers 
and sailors and marines of the United States, to join in 
the chase and to hunt down the fugitive. Now, fellow 
members of the House, if, for the purpose of making sla- 
very eternal, you could send your marshals and could 
summon posses and use the armed forces of the United 
States, by what face or grace can you tell us that, in 
order to procure freedom in elections and peace at the 
polls, you cannot use the same marshal with his armed 
posse ? But I refrain from discussing the merits of the 
proposition. I have tried in this hurried and unsatis- 
factory way to give my ground of opposition to this legis- 
lation." 

As Mr. Garfield resumed his seat, he was again 
loudly applauded on the Republican side and in the gal- 
leries. 

On the 4th of April, in reply to Mr. Tucker, of Vir- 
ginia, who in behalf of his party had threatened the stop- 
page of the supplies of the army unless the rider tacked 
on to the appropriation bill, forbidding the use of the 
troops at the polls, should be adopted, General Garfield 
spoke with rare force and effect. 

" Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, said : During the last four 
days fifteen or twenty demolitions of his argument of last 
Saturday had been made in the presence of the House 
and of the country. All of them save one had alleged 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 245 

that he held it to be revolutionary to place this legisla- 
tion on an appropriation bill. If they had any particular 
pleasure in setting up a man of straw to knock him down 
again, they had enjoyed that pleasure. He had never 
claimed that it was either revolutionary or unconstitu- 
tional to put a rider on an appropriation bill. No man on 
the Republican side had claimed that. The most that 
had been said was that it was considered a bad parliamen- 
tary practice. All parties in the country had repeatedly 
said that. The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Black- 
burn) had thought that he was especially severe in show- 
ing that he (Mr. Garfield) had insisted on the passage 
of a conference report in 1872, in an appropriation bill 
that had a rider to it,, and had said that it was revolution- 
ary in the Democratic party to resist it. What he (Mr. 
Garfield) had said on that occasion, and what he said now, 
was that it was revolutionary in the gentleman's parly to 
refuse to let the appropriation bill be voted on. For four 
days gentlemen on that side had said that the House 
should not vote on the appropriation bill because there 
was a rider on it. He had tried to prevent that rider 
being put on, but when the minority insisted that the 
House should never act upon it, he had said that that was 
an unparliamentary obstruction. The Republicans did not 
filibuster to prevent a vote on the pending measure. The 
majority had a right (however indecent it might be as a 
matter of parliamentary practice) to put a rider on the 
appropriation bill and pass it. When the bill was sent 
to the Senate that body had a perfect right to pass it. 
And when it went to the President, it was the President's 
constitutional right to approve and sign it. If the Presi- 



246 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



dent signed it, then it would be a law ; but it was equally 
the President's constitutional right to disapprove it. 
Should he do so, then, unless the other side had a two- 
third majority in the House and Senate to pass the bill 
notwithstanding the President's objections, it could not be 
passed without the flattest violation of the constitution. 

THE VETO QUESTION. 
" Nobody on the Republican side had brought up the 
question of a veto. It had been brought up by the proc- 
lamation of Democratic caucuses and by the conference 
committees of the last House that had written it down as 
their programme, that they would bind together these 
elements of legislation and send them to the President, 
and that if he did not approve them the Democratic party 
would not vote supplies for the government. You (said 
he, addressing the opposite side) threatened him in ad- 
vance, before you let him have an opportunity to say yes 
or no. You walked into this Capitol with your threats 
against him in your high-sounding proclamations. You 
' threatened in the index : ' it remains to be seen whether 
in the body of your work and in its concluding sentences 
your thunder will be as loud as it was in the opening 
chapter. (Applause on the Republican side.) Let no 
gentleman say that I, or any inan on this floor, have 
threatened a veto. It would be indecent to do it. It 
would be indecent for any of us even to speak of what 
the executive intends, for none of us has the right to 
know that. But you in advance proclaim to him that if 
he dared to exercise his constitutional power you would 
refuse to vote the supplies of the government — in other 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 247 

words, that you would starve it to death. And that is 
the proposition of my distinguished friend from Virginia 
(Mr. Tucker), who has come nearer meeting this case 
than any man on this floor — has made a point which is a 
part of the grandeur of his intellect, which I respect. 
He says that under our constitution we can vote supplies 
for the army for but two years, and that in a certain way 
the army ceases to be if the supplies are not voted. He 
is mistaken in one thing — the army is an organization in- 
dependent of appropriation bills so far as the creation of 
officers and ranks is concerned. The mere supply of it, 
of course, comes through the appropriation bills. If you 
refuse supplies to the army it must perish of inanition. 
The gentleman from Virginia says, * Unless you let us ap- 
pend a condition, which is to us a redress of grievances, 
we will let the army be annihilated on the 30th of June 
next by lack of food and shelter.' That is fair in argu- 
ment ; that is brave. But what is the ' grievance ' of 
which the gentleman complains? A law: a law of the 
land. A law made by the representatives of the people, 
made through all the proper forms of consent known to 
our constitution. And it is his grievance that he could 
not get rid of it in the ordinary and constitutional way of 
repealing a law. If he can get rid of it by all the powers 
of consent that go to make or unmake a law, then he can 
do so, whether it is a ' grievance ' or not, whether it is 
good or bad. 

" If the gentleman from Virginia wants to take before 
the American people this proposition of letting our army 
be annihilated on the 30th of June next, unless the Pres- 
ident, against his conscience and sense of duty, shall sign 



248 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

what he sends hira, we will debate the question in the 
forum of every man's mind. If what the gentleman from 
Kentucky (Mr. Blackburn) calls ' the return of the Dem- 
ocratic party to its birthright ' (changed to ' heritage ' in 
the Record) is to be signalized in its first great act by 
striking down the grand army of the United States, the 
people of this country will not be slow to understand that 
there are reminiscences about that army which these 
gentlemen would willingly get rid of. [Loud applause 
on the Republican side and in the galleries]. 

" In the course of further remarks Mr. Garfield ex- 
pressed his willingness to help the Democrats to wipe 
from the statute book the law authorizing the use of the 
army at the polls. A bill for that purpose should be in- 
troduced in the regular manner." 

In describing the effect of this speech the correspond- 
ent of the New York Herald said : 

" The exposure by General Garfield to-day of the de- 
mure manner in which the rider of the army bill was 
arranged by the Democrats will deservedly put the man- 
agers of tlie extremists to disgrace. The amendment so 
hastily offered from the Democratic side after he sat 
down, showed their surprise and a certain demoralization. 
This amendment has yet to be discussed in the House, as 
well as Mr. Baker's, offered in the interest of economy, 
and, he might have added, of a useful and necessary re- 
form, and the whole bill will be elaborately discussed and 
amended in the Senate. It will go to the President in a 
shape quite different from that in which it was brought 
into the House, and there are signs here that the moderate 
men of the Democratic side are at last — and a little too 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 249 

late, as usual — making up their minds to assert them- 
selves. They begin to try to steer their ship after the 
extremists have cjirried it into the breakers." 

Commenting upon the speech, the Herald said, edito- 
rially : 

" The discussion of the army bill yesterday was more 
powerful and noteworthy than it has been on any preced- 
ing day. Its great feature was the second speech of Mr. 
Garfield, who rose to the full height of the occasion and 
stripped the question of the infinite rubbish which has 
gathered around it in the progress of the debate. It was 
really a statesmanlike effort, alike remarkable for candor, 
for clearness of statement, for force of logic and especially 
for the sureness of aim with which he hit the Democratic 
position between wind and water and set his opponents at 
work in trying to stop the leaks in their ship. He frankly 
repudiated all the Republican nonsense about the enor- 
mity of attaching extraneous legislation to an appropria- 
tion bill. He declared his willingness to repeal the 
offensive sections of the Revised Statutes in separate 
bills. He stated some strong reasons why it is inexpe- 
dient to strike out merely the one clause which the Dem- 
ocrats seek to repeal without annulling the whole section. 
The effect of his speech seems to have been remarkable 
in disconcerting the Democrats. It is probable now that 
if an attempt is made to carry out the threat of stopping 
the supplies, the party will split, and our correspondent 
therefore says, very aptly and forcibly, that Mr. Garfield 
' has broken the Democratic line.' " 

On the 16th of April, during the debate on the South- 
ern Claims Bill, General Garfield made the following gen- > 



• 250 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

erous appeal in behalf of the men of the South who were 
loyal to the Union during the rebellion. He said : 

" The general doctrine of belligerents is, of course, ac- 
cepted by everybody to cover as enemies technically all 
the inhabitants of the belligerent territory. That general 
doctrine is recognized by all lawyers everywhere. But 
nobody has ever denied, except the gentleman from Wis- 
consin, that during our late war, and since the Supreme 
Court has repeatedly determined that in cases before it 
the question of loyalty cannot be raised where the party 
has been granted a pardon. It was stated in the last 
Congress that ninety-nine per cent, of all the people of 
the seceded States were what we would call disloyal, and 
that every man in those States that amounted to anything 
belonged to that category, I desire to traverse that prop- 
osition by some facts. Do gentlemen know that, leaving 
out all the border States, there were fifty regiments and 
seven companies of white men in our army fighting for 
the Union from the States that went into rebellion ? Do 
they know that from the single State of Kentucky more 
Union soldiers fought under our flag than Napoleon took 
into the battle of Waterloo — more than Wellington took 
with all the allied armies against Napoleon ? Do they 
remember that 186,000 colored men fought under our 
flag against the rebellion and for the Union, and that of 
that number 90,000 were from the States which went 
into rebellion? To say that they were enemies, that 
they had no rights, and that when we came out of the 
war we should not pay them and their families for all 
the proper losses that they suff'ered in aid of our Govern- 
ment, is what I had hoped no man on either side of the 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 251 

House would say. I am glad to know that the gentlemen 
who fought against us do not say it — not one of them. It 
remained for one of our own soldiers to say that nothing 
ought to be paid to any man, however loyal, if he came 
from the South. In my judgment, that is in the highest 
degree inequitable and unjust. Let the Southern Claims 
Commission go on until it has acted in cases before it, 
and then let it be mustered out. Let us not enlarge 
that business, but let us complete it. Most of all, let us 
not turn it over to a court where the distinction between 
loyalty and disloyalty is not retained." 

On the 19th of June, 1879, Mr. McMahon (Dem.), 
of Ohio, submitted to conference report upon the judi- 
cial expenses bill. The report recommends that the 
House recede from its disagreement to amendment 1 
and agree to the same, with an amendment striking out 
the words inserted by the Senate and inserting in lieu 
thereof the following: "Under any of the provisions of 
title 26 of the Revised Statutes of the United States 
authorizing the appointment or payment of _general or 
special deputy marshals for services in connection with 
elections or on election day." 

" Mr. McMahon proceeded to explain the report. If 
adopted it would prohibit any officer of the Government 
from making any contract or incurring any liability 
under any of the provisions of title 26 of the Revised 
Statutes. It would be seen that supervisors were not 
mentioned in the section. There was no doubt that all 
supervisors, ordinary and chief, were paid out of a perma- 
nent annual appropriation fund. The limitation was con- 
fined to marshals, and if Democrats surrendered that limi- 



252 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

tation, they would be base and worthless representatives 
of the people, and would no longer deserve the confidence 
of their constituents. Whatever might be thought of 
supervisors of elections the course of the Republican party 
in regard to special deputy marshals had been one of the 
grossest outrages on decent and fair elections that had 
ever been committed. 

THE EEPUBLICAN ATTITUDE. 
" Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, opposed the report, and laid 
down the position occupied by the Republican side on this 
question. The bill went beyond making appropriations 
and proposed to prevent the executive authority of the 
Government from enforcing the law. The issue was nar- 
rowed down to this point — the majority avowed its de- 
termination that marshals, deputy marshals, and assistant 
marshals shall not be appointed to execute the laws as 
embodied in title 26 of the Revised Statutes, and con- 
fessed that the clause in the conference report was in- 
tended and devised for that purpose. That made a square 
issue, which everybody could understand. The other 
side did not like the law, but it should have proposed to 
amend it so as to correct the abuses complained of The 
Republican side of the House was willing to offer or to 
accept an amendment placing the appointment of deputy 
marshals and assistant marshals (where that of the super- 
visors is) in the courts. That would be in the direction 
of legislation to cure the evil complained of. The other 
side, for want of a two-thirds majority, could not con- 
stitutionally repeal the law and therefore, not being able 
to repeal it, it wished to prevent the execution of the 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 253 

law. It was necessary that the courts should be open to 
all suitors, that justice should be done in every district, 
that prisoners should have a speedy trial. And so the 
other side segregated from all the other appropriations of 
the year that for the judicial expenses of the Government, 
and it held out the bill for judicial expenses in one hand 
and said, not to the minority alone but to all the offi- 
cers of the nation, * Take this money ; but you can only 
have it on condition that we shall be permitted to couple 
with it a provision that certain laws, which we cannot 
repeal, shall not be enforced ; that for the coming year 
they shaU be nullified. 

POSITION OF THE PKESIDENT. 

" See the attitude in which this bill puts the Presi- 
dent of the United States. It puts him absolutely be- 
tween two fires — the fire of your law on the one side, and 
the fire of heaven and his oath on the other. 

" Mr. McMahon, of Ohio.— How is the President at 
all interfered with. 

"Mr. Garfield. — The President has taken an oath 
that he shall see to it that the laws be faithfully executed. 
You do not repeal this law, but you make it impossible 
for him to execute it without his running in danger, on 
the one hand, of your impeaching him, or, on the other 
hand, without neglecting his duty and violating his oath. 
Now, I take it that no President of the United States can 
allow himself to be put in that attitude. The wisdom of 
the old writer of Proverbs, ' Surely in vain the net is 
spread in the sight of any bird,' is quite likely to apply 
in this case. I do not see that there is the sliofhtest 



254 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

probability that you can catch the President in this net, 
or that he will allow himself to be put in a position where 
he will be compelled to decide between obeying his oath 
and the constitution on the one hand, and obeying this 
entangling law on the other hand. 

During the summer and fall of 1879, General Garfield 
delivered a number of speeches in the West. At the 
twenty-fifth reunion of the Western Republicans, held at 
Madison, in July, 1879, he spoke as follows : 

"This vast assembly must have richly enjoyed the 
review of the party's history presented here and cele- 
brated here to-day, and not only a review of the past, 
but the hopeful promises made for the future of that 
great party. The Republican party, organized a quar- 
ter of a century ago, was made a necessity to carry out 
the pledges of the fathers that this should be a land of 
liberty. 

" There was in the early days of the Republic, a Re- 
publican party that dedicated this very territory, and all 
our vast territory, to freedom ; that promised much for 
schools ; that abolished imprisonment for debt, and that 
instituted many wise reforms. But there were many 
conservatives in those days, whose measures degenerated 
into treason ; and the Republican party of to-day was but 
the revival of the Republican party of seventy years ago, 
under new and broader conditions of usefulness. 

" It is well to remember and honor the greatest 
names of the Republican party. One of these is Joshua 
1\. Giddings, who for twenty ycears was freedom's cham- 
pion in Congress, and, from a feeble minority of two, 
lived to see a Republican Speaker elected, and himself to 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 255 

conduct him to the chair. Another is Abrahara Lincoln, 



the man raised up by God for a great mission. No man 
ever had a truer appreciation of the principles of the Dec- 
laration of Independence, that great charter which it was 
the mission of the Republican party to enforce. 

" There was a fitness in the first platform of the Wis- 
consin Republicans that they based themselves upon the 
Declaration of Independence. While the Republicans, 
from the first, have been true to their principles, perfect- 
ing all they promised, as proved to-day by the whole 
record, the Democrats, on the other hand, steadily wrong, 
have been forced from one bad position to another. 

" Can any Democrat point with pride to his party 
platforms of 1854, or find in them any living issue ? The 
issues they then presented led us into war and involved 
us in a great national debt. Looking for the cause of 
that debt, I say that the Democratic party caused it. 

" We are, as a nation, emerging from difficulties, and 
the Republican party alone can probably claim that the 
brightest pnge of our country's history has been written 
by the true friends of freedom and progress. The Re- 
publican party has yet work to do. We are confronted 
to-day in Congress by nearly the same spirit that pre- 
vailed in the years just before the war. 

" They tell us that the National Government is but 
the servant of the States ; that we shall not interpose, as 
a nation, to guard an honest election in a State ; that if 
we will interpose they will deny appropriations. Is this 
less dangerous than their position in 1861 ? Have we 
no interest except in local elections, no power to guard 
the ballot box and protect ourselves against outrages 



256 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

upon it ? Why does the South make this issue ? I an- 
swer : They have a solid South, and only used to carry 
Ohio and New York to elect the President, and they 
trust to carry these States by the means they best know 
how to use. 

" There are sentimentalists and optimists who may 
see no danger in this. There had been sentimentnlist.s 
and optimists in the Republican party, but to-day all 
were stalwarts. President Hayes, when he came into 
office, was an optimist, but he saw all his hopes, concil- 
iation frustrated, and all his advances met with scorn. 
"We all now stand together on the issue as one." 

At the Andersonville Reunion, at Toledo, Ohio, on 
the 3d of October, 1879, General Garfield said : 

" My Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen : I have ad- 
dressed a great many audiences, but I never before stood 
in the presence of one that I felt so wholly unworthy to 
speak to. A man who came through the war without 
being shot or made prisoner is almost out of place in 
such an assemblage as this. 

" While I have listened to you this evening, I have 
remembered the words of the distinguished Englishman 
who once said, ' that he was willing to die for his coun- 
try.' Now, to say that a man is willing to die for his 
country is a good deal, but these men who sit before 
us have said a great deal more than that. I would 
like to know where the man is that would calmly step 
out on the platform and say, ' I am ready to starve to 
death for my country.' That is an enormous thing to 
say, but there is a harder thing than that. Find a man, 
if you can, who will walk out before this audience and 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 257 

say, * I am willing to become an idiot for my country.' 
How many men could you find who would volunteer to 
become idiots for their country ? , 

" Now, let me make this statement to you, fellow- 
citizens : One hundred and eighty-eight thousand such 
men as this were captured by the rebels who were fight- 
ing our Government. One hundred and eighty-eight 
thousand ! How many is that. They tell me there are 
4,500 men and women in this building to-night ! Mul- 
tiply this mighty audience by forty and you will have 
about 188,000. Forty times this great audience were 
prisoners of war to the enemies of our country. And to 
every man of that enormous company there stood open 
night and day the offer : * If you will join the rebel 
army, and lift up your hand against your flag^ you are 
free.' 

"A voice. — ' That's so.' 

" General Garfield. — ' And you shall have food, and 
you shall have clothing, and you shall see wife, and 
mother, and child.' 

" A voice. — ' We didn't do it, though.' 

" General. — And do you know that out of that 
188,000 there were less than 3,000 who accepted the 
offer ? And of those 3,G00, perhaps nine-tenths of them 
did it with the mental reservation that they would 
desert at the first hour — the first moment there was an 
opportunity. 

"Voices.— 'That's so.' 

" General Garfield.— But 185,000 out of the 188,000 
said : ' No ! not to see wife again ; not to see child 
again ; not to avoid starvation ; not to avoid idiocy ; not 



258 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

to avoid the most loathsome of deaths, will I lift this 
hand against my country forever.' Now, we praise the 
ladies for their patriotism ; we praise our good citizens 
at home for their patriotism ; we praise the gallant sol- 
diers who fought and fell. But what were all these 
things compared with that yonder? I bow in rever- 
ence. I would stand with unsandaled feet in the pres- 
ence of such heroism and such suffering; and I would 
say to you, fellow-citizens, such an assemblage as this 
has never yet before met on this great earth. 

" Who have reunions ? I will not trench upon for- 
bidden ground, but let me say this : Nothing on the 
earth and under the sky can call men together for re- 
unions except ideas that have immortal truth and im- 
mortal life in them. Tiie animals fight. Lions and 
tigers fight as ferociously as did you. Wild beasts tear 
to the death, but they never have reunions. Why? 
Because wild beasts do not fight for ideas. They merely 
fight for blood. 

" All these men, and all their comrades went out 
inspired by two immortal ideas. 

" First, that liberty shall be universal in America. 

" And, second, that this old flag is the flag of a 
Nation, and not of a State ; that the Nation is supreme 
over all people and all corporations. 

" Call it a State ; call it a section ; call it a South ; 
call it a North; call it anything you wish, and yet, 
armed with the nationality that God gave us, this is a 
Nation against all State sovereignty and secession what- 
ever. It is the immortaHty of that truth that makes 
these reunions, and that makes this one. You believed 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 259 

it on the battle-field, you believed it in the hell of An- 
dersonville, and you believe it to-day, thank God ; and 
you will believe it to the last gasp. 

" Voices — ' Yes, we will,' ' That's so,' etc. 

" General Garfield. — Well, now, fellow-citizens and 
fellow-soldiers — but I am not worthy to be your fellow in 
this work, — I thank you for having asked me to speak to 
you. [Cries of * Go on !'' Go on ! ' ' Talk to us more, 
etc.] 

" I want to say simply that I have had one oppor- 
tunity only to do you any service. I did hear a man 
who stood by my side in the halls of the legislation — the 
man that offered on the floor of Congress the resolution 
that any man who commanded colored troops should be 
treated as a pirate and not as a soldier ; as a slave-stealer 
and not as a soldier — I heard that man calmly say, with 
his head up in the light, in the presence of this American 
people, that the Union soldiers were as well treated, and 
as kindly treated in all the Southern prisons as were the 
rebel soldiers in all the Northern prisons. 

" Voices. — ^ Liar !' ' Liar !' ' He was a liar !' 

" General Garfield. — I heard him declare that no 
kinder men ever lived than General Winder and his Com- 
mander-in-Chief, Jeff. Davis. [Yells of derision, hisses, 
etc.] And I took it upon myself to overwhelm him with 
the proof [a roll of applause begins], with the proof of 
the tortures you suffered, the wrongs done to you, were 
suffered and done with the knowledge of the Confederate 
authorities from Jefferson Davis down — [great applause, 
waving of hats, veterans standing in their chairs and 
cheering] — that it was a part of their policy to make you 



260 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

idiots and skeletons, and to exchange your broken and 
shattered bodies and dethroned minds for strong, robust, 
well-fed rebel prisoners. That policy, I affirm, has never 
had its parallel for atrocity in the civilized world." 

« Voice.—' That's so.' 

" General Garfield. — It was never heard of in any 
land since the dark ages closed upon the earth. While 
history lives men have memories. We can forgive and 
forget all other things before we can forgive and forget 
this. 

" Finally, and in conclusion, I am willing, for one — 
and I think I speak for thousands of others — I am will- 
ing to see all the bitterness of the late war buried in the 
grave of our dead. I would be willing that we should 
imitate the condescending, loving-kindness of him who 
planted the green grass on the battle-fields and let the 
fresh flowers bloom on all the graves alike. I would 
clasp hands with those who fought against us, make them 
my brethren, and forgive all the past, only on one su- 
preme condition : that it be admitted in practice, acknowl- 
edged in theory, that the cause for which we fought, and 
you sufl'ered, was and is, and for evermore will be right, 
eternally right." [Unbounded enthusiasm.] 

" Voices.—' That's it,' ' That's so,' etc. 

" General Garfield.— That the cause for which they 
fought was, and forever will be, the cause of treason and 
wrong. [Prolonged applause.] Until that is acknowl- 
edged my hand shall never grasp any rebel's hand across 
any chasm, however small." [Great applause and cheers ] 

General Garfield took an active part in the campaign 
in Ohio in the fall of 1879, which returned a Republican 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 261 

legislature, and ensured the electipn of a United States 
senator of the same political faith. 

The new Legislature of Ohio assembled in January, 
1880, and at once proceeded to the election of a United 
States senator to succeed Allen G. Thurman, whose term 
would expire on the 3d of March, 1881. General Gar- 
field was placed in nomination by his friends. Ex-Sen- 
ator Stanley Matthews, ex-Attorney-General Alphonso 
Taft, and ex-Governor William Denison had also entered 
into a canvass for the place, but by the time the caucus 
met the general sentiment of the State was so earnest 
and enthusiastic in favor of Garfield that his three com- 
petitors withdrew without waiting for a ballot, and he 
was nominated unanimously by a rising vote. On the 
15th of January he was elected United States Senator by 
a majority of 22 in the Assembly, and 7 in the Senate. 

On the same day General Garfield arrived in Colum- 
bus from Washington, and in the evening a reception was 
given to him in the hall of the House of Representatives, 
in the State capitol. He was introduced by Governor 
Foster, and after some hand-shaking, spoke as follows : 

" Fellow-citizens : I should be a great deal more than 
a man, or a great deal less than a man, if I were not ex- 
tremely gratified by the many marks of kindness you have 
shown me in recent days. I did not expect any such 
meeting as this. I knew there was a greeting awaiting 
me, but did not expect so cordial, generous, and general 
: a greeting, without distinction of party, without distinc- 
tion of interests, as I have received to-night. And you 
will allow me, in a moment or two, to speak of the mem- 
ories this chamber awakens. 



262 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" Twenty years ago this last week I first entered this 
chamber and entered upon the duties of public life, in 
which I have been every hour since that time in some 
capacity or other. I left this chamber eighteen years ago, 
and I believe I have never entered it since that time. 
But the place is familiar, though it was not peopled with 
the faces that I see before me here to-night alone, but with 
the faces of hundreds of people that I knew here twenty 
years ago, a large number of whom are gone from earth. 

" It was here in this chamber that the word was first 
brought of the firing on Fort Sumter. I remember dis- 
tinctly a gentleman from Lancaster, the late Senator 
Schleigh — General Schleigh, who died not very long ago 
— I remember distinctly as he came down this aisle, with 
all the look of agony and anxiety in his face, informing us 
that the guns had opened upon Sumter. I remember that 
one week after that time, on motion of a leading Demo- 
cratic senator, who occupied a seat not far from that po- 
sition (pointing to the Democratic side of the chamber), 
that we surrendered this chamber to several companies of 
soldiers who had come to Columbus to tender their ser- 
vices to the imperilled Government. They slept on its 
carpets and on these sofas, and quartered for two or three 
nights in this chamber while waiting for other quarters 
outside the capitol. 

" All the early scenes of the war are associated with 
this place in my mind. Here were the musterings — here 
was the centre, the nerve centre, of anxiety and agony. 
Here over 80,000 Ohio citizens tendered their services in 
the course of three weeks to the imperilled nation. Here, 
where we had been fighting our political battles with sharp 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 263 

and severe partisanship, there disappeared, almost as if by 
magic, all party lines ; and from both sides of the cham- 
ber men went out to take their places on the field of bat- 
tle. I can see now, as I look out over the various seats, 
where sat men who afterward became distinguished in the 
service in high rank, and nobly served their constituen- 
cies and honored themselves. 

" We now come to this place, while so many are 
gone ; but we meet here to-night with the war so far back 
in the distance that it is an almost half-forgotten memory. 
We meet here to-night with a nation redeemed. We 
meet here to-night under the flag we fought for. We 
meet with a glorious, a great and growing Republic, made 
greater and more glorious by the sacrifices through which 
the country has passed. And coming here as I do to- 
night, brings the two ends of twenty years together, ^j^ith 
all the visions of the terrible and glorious, the touching 
and cheerful, that have occurred during that time. 

" I came here to-night, fellow-citizens, to thank this 
General Assembly for their great act of confidence and 
compliment to me. I do not undervalue the office that 
you have tendered to me yesterday and to-day ; but I 
say, I think, without any mental reservation, that the 
manner in which it was tendered to me is far higher to 
me, far more desirable, than the thing itself. That it 
has been a voluntary gift of the General Assembly of 
Ohio, without solicitation, tendered to me because of 
their confidence, is as touching and as high a tribute as 
one man can receive from his fellow-citizens, and in the 
name of all my friends, for myself, I give you my 
thanks. 



264 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" I recognize the importance of the place to which 
you have elected me ; and I should be base if I did not 
also recognize the great man whom you have elected me 
to succeed. I say for him, Ohio has had few larger- 
minded, broader-minded men in the records of our his- 
tory than that of Allen G. Thurman. Differing widely 
from him as I have done in politics, and do, I recog- 
nize him as a man high in character and great in intel- 
lect ; and I take this occasion to refer to what I have 
never before referred to in public : that many years 
ago, in the storm of party fighting, when the air was 
filled with all sorts of missies aimed at the character 
and reputation of public men, when it was even for his 
party interest to join the general clamor against me and 
my associates. Senator Thurman said in public, in the 
campaign, on the stump — when men are as likely to 
say unkind things as at any place in the world — a most 
generous and earnest word of defence and kindness for 
me, which I shall never forget so long as I live. I say, 
moreover, that the flowers that bloom over the garden- 
wall of party politics are the sweetest and most fragrant 
that bloom in the gardens of this world ; and where we 
can fairly pluck them and enjoy their fragrance, it is 
manly and delightful to do so. 

" And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly, 
without distinction of party, ^ recognize this tribute and 
compliment paid to me to-night. Whatever my own 
course may be in the future, a large share of the in- 
spiration of my future public life will be drawn from 
this occasion and these surroundings, and I shall feel 
anew the sense of obligation that I feel to the State of 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 265 

Ohio. Let me venture to point a single sentence in 
regard to that work. During the twenty years that I 
have been in public life, almost eighteen of it in the 
Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one 
thing. Whether I was mistaken or otherwise, it has 
been the plan of my life to follow my conviction at 
whatever personal cost to myself. 

"I have represented for many years a district in 
Congress, whosfe approbation I greatly desired ; but 
though it may seem, perhaps, a little egotistical to 
say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one 
person, and his name was Garfield. He is the only 
man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat witli, 
and live with, and die with ; and if I could not have 
his approbation I should have bad companionship. And 
in this larger constituency which has called me to rep- 
resent them now, I can only do what is true to my best 
self, applying the same rule. 

" And if I should be so unfortunate as to lose the 
confidence of this larger constituency, I must do what 
every other fair-minded man has to do — carry his polit- 
ical life in his hand and would take the consequences. 
But I must follow what seems to me to be the only safe 
rule of my life ; and with that view of the case, and with 
that much personal reference, I leave that subject. 

"Thanking you again, fellow-citizens, members of 
the General Assembly, Republicans as well as Demo- 
crats — all party men as I am — thanking you both for 
what you have done and for this cordial and manly 
greeting, I bid you good-night." 

On the day of General Garfield's election to the Sen- 



266 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ate, President Hinsdale, of Hiram College, made the fol- 
lowing announcement to the students of that institu- 
tion: 

" To-day a man will be elected to the United States 
Senate in Columbus, who, when a boy, was once the bell- 
ringer in this school and afterward its president. Feeling 
this, we ought, in some way, to recognize this step in his 
history. I will to-morrow morning call your attention to 
some of the more notable and worthy features of General 
Garfield's history and character." . 

The address which President Hinsdale delivered on 
the occasion is as follows : 

" Young Ladies and Gentlemen : I am not going to 
attempt a formal address on the life and character of 
General Garfield. There is now no call for such an at- 
tempt, and I have made no adequate preparations for 
such a task. My object is far humbler : simply to hold 
up to your minds some points in his history, and some 
features in his character that young men and women may 
study with interest and profit. 

" I shall begin by destroying history, or what is 
commonly held to be history. The popularly accepted 
account of General Garfield's history and character is 
largely fabulous. We are not to suppose that the ages 
of myth and legend are gone ; under proper conditions 
such growths spring up now, and I know of no man in 
public life around whom they have sprung up more 
rankly than around the subject of my remarks. 

" No doubt you have seen some of the stories con- 
cerning him and his family that appear ever and anon in 
the newspapers ; 'that his mother chopped cord wood; that 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 267 

she fought wolves with fire to keep them from devour- 
ing her children, her distinguished son being one of the 
group ; that the circumstances of the family were most 
pinching ; that Garfield himself could not read at the age 
of twenty-one; that he was peculiarly reckless in his 
early life ; that, when he had become a man, he went 
down from the pulpit to thrash a bully who interrupted 
him in his sermon on the patience of Job. 

" These stories, and others like them, are all false and 
all harmful. They fail of accomplishing the very purpose 
for which they were professedly told — the stimulation of 
youth. To make the lives of the great distorted and 
monstrous is not to make them fruitful as lessons. 

" If a life be anomalous and outlandish, it is, for that 
reason, the poorer example. It is all in the wrong direc- 
tion. It makes the impression that, in human history, 
there is no cause and no effect ; no antecedent and no 
consequent ; that everything is capricious and fitful ; and 
suggests that the best thing to do is to abandon one's self 
to the currents of life, trusting that some beneficent gulf- 
stream will seize you and bear you to some happy shore. 
No, young people, do not heed such instruction as this. 

" The best lives for them to study are those that are 
natural and symmetrical ; those in which the relation be- 
tween cause and effect is so close and apparent that the 
dullest can see it ; and that preach in the plainest terms 
the sermon on the text : ' Whatever a man soweth that 
shall he also reap.' 

" Irregular and abnormal lives will do for ' studies,' 
but healthy, normal, harmonious lives should be chosen 
for example. And General Garfield's life from the first 



268 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

has been eminently healthy, normal, and well-propor 
tioned. 

" He was horn in the woods of Orange, Cuyahoga 
County, in 1831. His father died when the son was a 
year and a half old. Abram Garfield's circumstances 
were those of his neighbors. Measured by our standard 
they were all poor ; they lived on small farms, for which 
they had gone in debt, hoping to clear and pay for them 
by their toil. Garfield dying, left his wife and four 
young children in the condition that any one of his neigh- 
bors would have done in like circumstances — poor. The 
family life before had been close and hard enough ; now 
it became closer and harder. 

" Grandma Garfield, as some of us familiarly call her, 
was a woman of unusual energy, faith, and courage. She 
said the children should not be separated, but kept them 
together; and that the home should be maintained, as 
when its head was living. The battle was a hard one, 
and she won it. All honor to her, but let us not make 
her ridiculous by inventing impossible stories. 

" To external appearance, young Garfield's life did 
not differ materially from the lives of the neighbors' boys. 

" He chopped wood, and so did they ; he mowed, and 
so did they ; he carried butter to the store in a little pail, 
and so did they. Other famihes that had not lost their 
heads naturally shot ahead of the Garfields in property ; 
but such diff'erences counted far less then than they do 
now. The traits of his maturer character appeared early ; 
studiousness, truthfulness, generosity of nature, and men- 
tal power. So far was he from being reckless, that he 
was almost seriouS; reverent, and thoughtful. So far was 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 269 

he from being unable to read at twenty-one, that he was 
a teacher in the district schools before he was eighteen. 

" He was the farthest removed from being a pugilist, 
though he had great physical strength and courage, cool- 
ness of mind, was left-handed withal, and was both able 
and disposed to defend himself and all his rights, and 
did so on due occasion. 

" His three months' service on the canal has been the 
source of numerous fables and morals. The morals are 
as false as the fables, and more misleading. All I have 
to say about it is : James A. Garfield has not risen to 
the position of a United States Senator because he * ran 
on a canal.' Nor is it because he chopped more wood 
than the neighbors' boys. Many a man has run longer 
on the canal, and chopped more wood, and never became 
a senator. 

" General Garfield once rang the school bell when a 
student here. That did not make him the man he is. 
Convince me that it did, and I will hang up a bell in 
every tree in the campus, and set you all to ringing. 
Thomas Cor win, when a boy, drove a wagon, and became 
the head of the Treasury ; Thomas Ewing boiled salt, and 
became a senator ; Henry Clay rode a horse to mill from 
the ' Slashes,' and he became the great commoner of the 
West. But it was not the wagon, the salt, and horse 
that made these men great. 

" These are interesting facts in the lives of these 
illustrious men ; they show, that in our country it has 
been, and still is possible for young men of ability, en- 
ergy, and determined purpose to rise above a lowly con- 
dition, and win places of usefulness and honor. Poverty 



270 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

may be a good school ; straitened circumstances may 
develop power and character; but the principal con- 
ditions of success are in the man, and not in his sur- 
roundings. 

" Garfield is the man he is because nature gave him 
a noble endowment of faculties that he has nobly handled. 
We must look within, and not without, for the secret of 
destiny. The thing to look at in a man's life are his 
aspirations, his energy, his courage, his strength of will, 
and not the wood he may have chopped, or the salt he 
may have boiled. How a man works, and not what he 
does, is the test of worth. 

" His success did not lie in his technical scholarship, 
or his ability as a drill-master. Teachers are plenty who 
much surpass him in these particulars. He had great 
ability to grasp a subject, to organize a body of intel- 
lectual materials, to amass facts and work out striking 
generalizations, and therefore he excelled in rhetorical 
exposition. An old pupil who has often heard him on the 
stump, once told me, ' The General succeeds best when 
talking to the people just as he did to his class.' He 
imparted to his pupils largeness of view, enthusiasm, and 
called out of them unbounded devotion to himself. 

" This devotion was not owing to any plan or trick, 
but to the qualities of the man. Mr. H. M. Jones, of the 
Cleveland schools, an old Hiram scholar, speaking of the 
old Hiram days before Garfield went to college, once 
wrote me : * There began to grow up in me an admira- 
tion and love for Garfield that has never abated, and the 
like of which I have never known. A bow of recognition, 
or a simple word from him, was to me an inspiration.' 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 271 

"Probably all were not equally susceptible, but all 
the boys who were long under his charge (save perhaps, a 
few ' sticks'), would speak in the same strain. He had 
great power to energize young men. General Garfield 
has carried the same qualities into public life. He has 
commanded success. His ability, knowledge, mastery of 
questions, generosity of nature, devotion to the public 
good, and honesty of purpose, have done the work. He 
has never had a political ' machine.' He has never for- 
gotten the day of small things. He has never made per- 
sonal enemies. 

"It is difficult to see how a political triumph could 
be more complete or more gratifying than his election 
to the Senate. No * bar-bains,' no * slate,' no * grocery' 
at Columbus. He did not even go to the capital city. 
Such things are inspiring to those who think politics in a 
broad way. He is a man of positive convictions, freely 
uttered. Politically he may be called a * man-of-war ; ' 
and yet few men, or none, begrudge him his triumph. 
Democrats vied with Republicans the other day in Wash- 
ington in snowing him under with congratulations ; some 
of them were as anxious for his election as any Repub- 
lican could be. 

" It is said that he will go to the Senate without an 
enemy on either side of the chamber. These things are 
honorable to all parties. They show that manhood is 
more than party. The Senator is honored, Ohio is hon- 
ored, and so is the school in Hiram, with which he was 
connected so many years. The whole • story abounds in 
interest, and I hope I have so told it as to bring out some 
of its best points, and to give you stimulus and cheer." 



272 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

General Garfield took an active part in the regular 
session of the forty-sixth Congress, which met in Decem- 
ber, 1879, and on the 17th of March, 1880, delivered one 
of his most powerful speeches. The Civil Appropriation 
Bill was under discussion, and the Democratic majority 
was endeavoring to force the Government into removing 
the United States marshals from the polls at elections, 
by refusing the appropriation for the pay of those officers. 
General Garfield said : 

" The discussion of this bill has concentrated upon 
two topics — the public printing and the election laws. 
On the subject of the public printing I shall take no time, 
except to say this : After one of the saddest histories in 
the experience of this Government with the old contract 
system, which broke down by the weight of its own cor- 
ruption, it was developed and proved beyond any contro- 
versy that in the four years preceding the administration 
of Abraham Lincoln, out of the private profits on the 
public printing and binding, the sum of $100,000 was 
contributed by the public printer for political purposes, 
mainly to carry the Democratic elections in Pennsyl- 
vania; and that vast contribution did not exhaust the 
profits of the public printer out of the Government. This 
exposure destroyed the wretched contract system, and 
thereafter the Government itself assumed the responsi- 
bility of the work. At first the Senate or the House of 
Representatives elected a Printer, as they had a manifest 
right to do under the clause of the Constitution which 
gives each House the power to elect its own officers. 
But when, by and by, the office grew into a great national 
establishment, in which all the printing and binding for 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 273 

all departments of the Government was done, it became 
manifest that the Senate was exercising a power of ap- 
pointment unwarranted by the Constitution ; and in the 
year 1874, on motion of Mr. Hale, of New York, a reso- 
lution was adopted by a two-thirds vote suspending the 
rules of the House and making in order on a sundry civil 
service appropriation bill an amendment to change the 
law and make the Printer an officer of the United States, 
to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the 
Senate. I had charge of that bill and voted for the 
amendment, as did nearly all my associates, and it was 
adopted by the almost unanimous vote of this House, 
both parties uniting in declaring that the old law was un- 
constitutional, and that experience had proved it unwise ; 
Republicans taking their share of responsibility for their 
own blunders and mistakes ; all agreeing that the law 
ought to conform to the Constitution. 

"When the Democratic party came into power in 
1876, they amended that law by making it take effect 
immediately. We made it take effect when a vacancy 
should occur in the office of Public Printer. In 1876 the 
law was so changed as to make it take effect immediately. 
And that passed by the general consent of both parties. 
The proposition now is, to go back, and in the face of our 
past experience, make a change in this law which will 
not affect in any way the question of economy, which will 
not change one iota of the machinery of the management 
of the public printing, and does not pretend to be in the 
direction of economy ; but merely abolishes a constitu- 
tional office and creates an unconstitutional one, takes the 
appointing power out of the hands of the President and 

18 



274 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

unlawfully places it in the hands of this House, merely 
to get some Democrat into office. This is to be done for 
no public good, to satisfy the demands of party hunger. 
I have no doubt that this amendment will be, as it cer- 
tainly ought to be, ruled out of order, and I will waste no 
further words in discussing it. 



CONTEMNINa THE SUPEEME COURT DECISION. 

" I will now call attention, during the short time left 
me, to what I consider a matter of far greater moment. 
My colleague [Mr. McMahon], in his speech opening 
the discussion upon this bill, made the announcement in 
substance, and it remains uncontradicted and not pro- 
tested against by anyone on this side of the House, first, 
that * we have not hitherto made, do not in this bill, and 
will not in any future bill, make any appropriation what- 
ever for supervisors or special deputy marshals, so far 
as they have to do with congressional elections.' He 
asserts that it was not proper for any officer of the 
Government to appoint special deputy marshals when 
no appropriation had been made for that specific pur- 
pose. 

" Then, further on, he declares — I quote from his 
printed speech : 

" ' And I desire to say that because the Supreme Court 
of the United States has decided that the election law is 
constitutional by a sort of eight-by-seven decision — and 
I mean by that a division apparently according to party 
lines (without impugning the good faith of any member 
of the Supreme Court, but to show how differently a legal 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 275 

question may appear to persons who have been educated 
in different political schools) — that although that court 
has decided the constitutionality of the law, that when 
we come, as legislators, to appropriate money, it is our 
duty to say, is this law constitutional? or, if constitu- 
tional, is it a good law, and are we bound to appropriate 
money for it ? ' 

" He undertakes, as will be seen, to throw contempt 
on that decision by styling it * a sort of eight-by-seven 
decision/ I remind him that it is a seven-to-two de- 
cision, having been adopted by a larger number of the 
members of the court than the majority of the decisions 
of that tribunal. It is a decision of a broad, sweeping 
character, and declares that Congress may take the' whole 
control of congressional elections, or a partial control, as 
they choose ; that the election law as it stands on the 
national statute-book is the supreme law of the land on 
that subject. 

"More than that: the Supreme Court, not only in 
this case but in another recent case, has made a declara- 
tion which ought to be engraven upon the minds and 
hearts of all the people of this country. And this is its 
substance : 

" ' That a law of Congress interpenetrates and be- 
comes a part of every law of every State of this Union 
to which its subject matter is applicable, and is binding 
upon all people on every foot of our soil. This is the 
voice of the Constitution.' 

" Now, therefore, under this decision the election laws 
of the United States are the laws of every State of this 
Union. No judge of election, no State otiicer or other 



276 JAMES A. GARFIELD. . 

persons connected with any congressional election, no 
elector who offers his ballot at any such election, can with 
impunity lift his hand or do any act against any of the 
provisions of these laws. They rest down upon congres- 
sional elections upon every State like the ' casing air,' 
broad and general, protecting with their dignity every 
act, and penetrating with their authority every function 
of congressional elections. They are the supreme law 
of the land on that subject. 

" But now a Representative, speaking for the Demo- 
cratic party in this House, rises, not with the plea which 
he could have made with some show of plausibility last 
year, that the law is unconstitutional, and that therefore 
they would not enforce it — but with a constitutional law, 
declared so by the Supreme Court, covering him and fill- 
ing the Republic from end to end, reaching everywhere 
and covering every foot of our soil where a congressional 
election can be held — he rises in his place and declares 
that the Democratic party will not execute that law nor 
permit it to be obeyed. 

*' We who are the sworn law-makers of the nation, 
and ought to be examples of respect for and obedience to 
the law — we who before we took our first step in legis- 
lation swore before God and our country that we would 
support the supreme law of the land — we are now in- 
vited to become conspicuous leaders in the violation 
of the law. My colleague announces his purpose to 
break the law, and invites Congress to follow him in his 
assault upon it. 

" ;Mr. Chairman, by far the most formidable danger 
that threatens the Republic to-day is the spirit of law- 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 277 

breaking which shows itself in many turbulent and 
alarming manifestations. The people of the Pacific 
Coast, after two years of wrestling with the spirit of com- 
munism in the city of San Francisco, have finally grap- 
pled with this lawless spirit, and the leader of it was 
yesterday sentenced to penal servitude as a violator of 
the law. But what can we say to Dennis Kearney and 
his associates if to-day we announce ourselves the fore- 
most law-breakers of the country and set an example 
to all the turbulent and vicious elements of disorder to 
follow us ? 

THE ELECTION LAWS MANDATORY. 

"My colleague [Mr. McMahon] tries to shield his 
violation of the law behind a section of the statutes 
which provides that no disbursing or other officer shall 
make any contract involving the expenditure of money 
beyond what is appropriated for the purpose. I answer 
that I hold in my hand a later law, a later statute, which 
governs the restrictive law of which he speaks, which 
governs him and governs the courts. It is the election 
law itself. I invite attention briefly to its substance. 
Sections 2011 and 2012 of the Revised Statutes provide 
that upon the application of any two citizens of any city 
of more than twenty thousand inhabitants to have the 
election guarded and scrutinized, the judge of the circuit 
court of the United States shall hold his court open 
during the ten days preceding the election. The law 
commands the judge of the court to so do. 

" In the open court from day to day, and from time 
to time, the judge shall appoint, and, under the seal of 



1578 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the court, shall commission two citizens of different politi- 
cal parties who are voters within the precinct where they 
reside, to be supervisors of the election. That law is 
mandatory upon the judge. Should he refuse to obey he 
can be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors in 
office. He must not stop to inquire whether an appro- 
priation has been made to pay these supervisors. The 
rights of citizens are involved ; upon their application 
the judge must act. But what then ? 

" Again, section 2021 provides that on the applica- 
tion of two citizens the marshal of the United States 
shall appoint special deputy marshals to protect the su- 
pervisors in the execution of their duty. And the law is 
mandatory upon the marshal. He must obey it under 
the pains and penalties of the law. What then ? When 
the supervisors and special deputy marshals have been 
appointed they find their duties plainly prescribed in the 
law. And then section 5521 provides that if they neg- 
lect or refuse to perform fully all these duties enjoined 
upon them, they are liable to fine and imprisonment. 
They cannot excuse their neglect by saying, 'We will 
not act because Congress has not appropriated the money 
to pay us.' 

"All these officers are confronted by the imperial com- 
mand of the law — first to the judge and marshal to ap- 
point, then to the supervisor and deputy marshal to act, 
and to act under the pains and penalties of fine and im- 
prisonment. Impeachment enforces the obedience of the 
judge ; fine and imprisonment the obedience of the super- 
visors and deputy marshals. 

" Now comes one other mandatory order : in the last 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 279 

section of this long chapter of legislation the majestic 
command of the law is addressed both to Congress and 
the Treasury. It declares that there ^ shall be paid ' out 
of the treasury five dollars per day to these officers as 
compensation for their services. Here, too, the law is 
equally imperious and mandatory ; it addresses itself to 
the conscience of every member of this House, with only 
this difference : we cannot be impeached for disobedi- 
ence ; we cannot be fined or locked up in the penitentiary 
for voting ' no,' and refusing the appropriation ; we can- 
not be fined or imprisoned if we refuse to do our duty. 
And so, shielded by the immunity of his privilege as a 
representative, my colleague sets the example to all offi- 
cers and all people of deliberately and with clear-sighted 
purpose violating the law of the land. 

" Thus he seeks to nullify the law. Thus he hopes 
to thwart the nation's * collected will.' Does my col- 
league reflect that in doing this he runs the risk of viti- 
ating every national election ? Suppose his lead be fol- 
lowed, and the demand of citizens for supervisors and 
marshals is made and refused because an appropriation 
has not been voted. Does he not see the possibility of 
vitiating every election held where fraud and violence 
are not suppressed and the law has not been complied 
with ? Yet he would risk the validity of all the con- 
gressional elections of the United States; rather than 
abandon his party's purpose he would make Congress 
the chief of the law breakers of the land. 

" Mr. Chairman, when I took my seat as a member of 
this House, I took it with all the responsibilities which 
the place brought upon me ; and among others was my 



280 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

duty to keep the obligations of the law. Where the law 
speaks in mandatory terms to everybody else and then 
to me, I should deem it cowardly and dishonorable if I 
should skulk behind my legislative privilege for the pur- 
pose of disobeying and breaking the supreme law of the 
land. [Applause.] 



THE PKESENT ISSUE. 

"The issue now made is somewhat different from 
that of the last session, but, in my judgment, it is not 
less significant and dangerous. I would gladly waive 
any party advantage which this controversy might give 
for the sake of that calm and settled peace which would 
reign in this hall if we all obeyed the law. But if the 
leaders on the other side are still determined to rush 
upon their fate by forcing upon the country this last 
issue — that because the Democratic party happen not 
to like a law they will not obey it — because they hap- 
pen not to approve of the spirit and character of a law 
they will not let it be executed — I say to gentlemen on 
the other side, if you are determined to make such an 
issue, it is high time that the American people should 
know it. 

" Here is the volume of our laws. More sacred than 
the twelve tables of Rome, this rock of the law rises in 
monumental grandeur alike above the people and the 
President, above the courts, above Congress, command- 
ing everywhere reverence and obedience to its supreme 
authority. Yet the dominant party in this House virtu- 
ally declares that ' any part of this volume that we do 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 281 

not like and cannot repeal we will disobey. We have 
tried to repeal these election laws ; we have failed be- 
cause we had not the constitutional power to destroy 
them. The Constitution says they shall stand in their 
authority and power ; but we, the Democratic party in 
defiance of the Constitution, declare that if we can- 
not destroy them outright by the repeal, they shall be 
left to crumble into ruin by wanton and lawless neg- 
lect.' 

" Mr. Chairman. — I ask gentlemen on the other side 
whether they wish to maintain this attitude in regard to 
the legislation of this country ? Are they willing to start 
on a hunt through the statutes and determine for them- 
selves what they will obey and what they will disobey ? 
That is the meaning of my colleague's speech. If it 
means anything it means that. He is not an old Bran- 
denburg elector, but an elector in this novel and mod- 
ern sense, that he will elect what laws he will obey and 
what he will disobey, and in so far as his power can go, 
he will infect with his spirit of disobedience all the good 
people of this country who trust him. 

THE DANGER OF EXAMPLE OF DISOBEDIENCE. 

" I ask, gentlemen, whether this is a time when it is 
safe to disregard and weaken the authority of law. In 
all quarters the civil society of this country is becoming 
honey-combed through and through by disintegrating 
forces — in some States by the violation of contracts and 
the repudiation of debts ; in others by open resistance and 
defiance ; in still others by the reckless overturning of con- 



282 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

stitutions and letting * the red fool-fury of the Seine ' run 
riot among our people and build its blazing altars to the 
strange gods of ruin and misrule. All these things are 
shaking the good order of society and threatening the 
foundations of our government and our peace. In a time 
like this, more than ever before, this country needs a body 
of law-givers clothed and in their right minds, who have 
laid their hands upon the altar of the law as its defenders, 
not its destroyers. And yet now, in the name of party, 
for some supposed party advantage, my colleague from 
Ohio announces, and no one on his side has said him nay, 
that they not only have not in the past obeyed, but in the 
future they will not obey this law of the land which the 
Supreme Court has just crowned with the authority of 
its sanction. If my colleague chooses to meet that issue, 
if he chooses to go to the country with that plea, I shall 
regret it deeply for my country's sake ; but if I looked 
only to my party's interest, it would" give me joy to en- 
gage in such a struggle. 

" The contest of last autumn made the people under- 
stand the tendencies of gentlemen on the other side. 
Now, this cool, calm, deliberate assassination of the law 
will not be tolerated. We have had a winter to freeze 
out our passion, we have had a summer to thaw out our 
indifference, we have had the changing circles of the year 
to bring us around to order and calmness, and yet all the 
fiery courses of the stars seem to have shed their influ- 
ence on my colleague to fire him with a more desperate 
madness and drive his party on to a still sadder fate. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] 

" I trust and believe that we may yet find some re- 



LEADS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 283 

sponse from the other side of the House that will pre- 
vent this course of procedure. If we do, I will gladly 
give away any party advantage for the sake of strength- 
ening the foundations of law and good order. And I 
therefore appeal to gentlemen on the other side to pre- 
vent a disaster which their party leaders are preparing, 
not for themselves alone, but for our common country. I 
hope before this day is over we may see such a vote in 
this chamber upon this bill as will put an end to this 
miserable business, and cast out of these halls the dregs 
of that unfortunate and crazy extra session." [Applause 
on the Republican side.] 



CHAPTER yilL 

GENERAL GARFIELD's FINANCIAL RECORD. 

General Garfield's Appointment to the Committee on Banking and Currency 
— His Efforts in Congress in behalf of Honest Money— A Formal State- 
ment of his Views on the Money Question— The Currency Doctrine of 
1862 — Definition of Money — Money as an Instrument of Exchange — 
Coin as an Instrument of Universal Credit — Statutes cannot Repeal the 
Laws of Value — Paper Money as an Instrument of Credit — Necessity of 
Resumption — A Powerful Argument — General Garfield's Speech on the 
Weaver Resolutions. 

In 1868, General Garfield was appointed Chairman of 
the Committee on Banking and Currency, and during the 
same Congress did most of the hard work on the Ninth 
Census. His financial views, always sound, and based 
on the firm foundation of honest money and unsullied 
national honor, had now become strengthened by his 
studies and investigations, and he was recognized as the 
best authority in the House on the great subjects of the 
debt and the currency. His record in the legislation 
concerning these subjects is without a flaw. No man in 
Congress made a more consistent and unwavering fight 
against the paper money delusions that flourished dur- 
ing the decade following the war, and in favor of specie 
payments and the strict fulfilment of the nation's obliga- 
tions to its creditors. His speeches became the financial 
gospel of the Republican party. No man gave more ar- 



FINANCIAL RECORD. 285 

dent and useful support to the policy of resuming specie 
payments, and no man in Congress contributed more in 
bringing it about. 

One of the most carefully prepared expressions of his 
views on the financial question was contributed by him to 
The Atlantic Monthly^ in February, 1876. It is a paper 
of the highest importance, and we give it in full. He 
styles it " The Currency Conflict," and says : 

" In the autumn of 1862, I spent several weeks 
with Secretary Chase, and was permitted to share his 
studies of the financial questions which were then en- 
grossing his attention. He was preparing to submit to 
Congress his matured plans for a system of banking and 
currency to meet the necessities of the war, and this sub- 
ject formed the chief theme of his conversation. He was 
specially anxious to work out in his own mind the prob- 
able relations of greenbacks to gold, to the five-twenty 
bonds, to the proposed national bank notes, and to the 
business of the country. 

" One evening the conversation turned on some ques- 
tion relating to the laws of motion, and Mr. Chase asked 
for a definition of motion. Some one answered ' Matter 
is inert, spirit alone can move j therefore motion is the 
Spirit of God made manifest in matter.' The Secretary 
said, ' If that is a good definition, then legal tender notes 
must be the devil made manifest in paper ; for no man can 
foresee what mischief they may do when they are once 
let loose.' He gravely doubted whether that war-born 
spirit, summoned to serve us in a dreadful emergency, 
would be mustered out of service with honor when the 
conflict should end, or, at the return of peace, would cap- 



286 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

ture public opinion and enslave the nation it had served. 
To what extent his fears were well founded may be ascer- 
tained b}'' comparing the present state of the public mind 
in regard to the principles of monetary science with that 
which prevailed when our existing financial machinery 
was set up. 

" More than a million votes will be cast at the next 
Presidential election by men who were school-boys in 
their primers when the great financial measures of 1862 
were adopted ; and they do not realize how fast or how 
far the public mind has drifted. The log-book of this 
extraordinary voyage cannot be read too often. Let it 
be constantly borne in mind that fourteen years ago the 
American people considered themselves weU instructed 
in the leading doctrines of monetary science. They had 
enjoyed, or rather suffered, an extraordinary experience. 
There was hardly an experiment in banking and currency 
that they or their fathers had not fully tested. 



THE CURRENCY DOCTRINES OF 1862. 

" The statesmen of that period, the leaders of public 
thought, and the people of all political parties were sub- 
stantially unanimous in the opinion that the only safe in- 
strument of exchange known among men was standard 
coin, or paper convertible into coin at the will of the 
holder. 

" I will not affirm that this opinion was absolutely 
unanimous ; for doubtless there was here and there a 
dreamer who looked upon paper money as a sort of fetich, 
and was ready to crown it as a god. There are always a 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 287 

few who believe in the quadrature of the circle and the 
perpetual motion. I recently met a cultivated American 
who is a firm believer in Buddha, and rejoices in the 
hope of attaining Nirvdna beyond the grave. The gods 
of Greece were discrowned and disowned by the civilized 
world a thousand years ago ; yet within the last genera- 
tion an eminent English scholar attested his love for clas- 
sical learning and his devotion to the Greek mythology 
by actually sacrificing a bull to Jupiter, in the back par- 
lor of his house, in London. So, in 1862, there may have 
been followers of William Lowndes and of John Law 
among our people, and here and there a philosopher who 
dreamed of an ideal standard of value stripped of all the 
grossness of so coarse and vulgar a substance as gold. 
But they dwelt apart in silence, and their opinions made 
scarce a ripple on the current of public thought. 

" No one can read the history of that year without 
observing the great reluctance, the apprehension, the pos- 
itive dread with which the statesmen and people of that 
day ventured upon the experiment of making treasury 
notes a legal tender for private debts. They did it under 
the pressure of an overmastering necessity, to meet the 
immediate demands of the war, and with a most deter- 
mined purpose to return to the old standard at the ear- 
liest possible moment. Indeed, the very act that made 
the greenbacks a legal tender provided the effective 
means for retiring them. 

"Distressing as was the crisis, urgent as was the 
need, a large number of the best and most patriotic men 
in Congress voted against the act. The ground of their 
opposition was well expressed by Owen Lovejoy, of lUi- 



288 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

nois, who, after acknowledging the unparalleled difficul- 
ties and dangers of the situation, said, ' There is no 
precipice, there is no chasm, there is no possible bottom- 
less, yawning gulf before the nation so appalling, so 
ruinous, as this same bill that is before us.' 

" Of those who supported the measure, not one de- 
fended it as a permanent policy. All declared that they 
did not abate a jot of their faith in the soundness of the 
old doctrines. 

" Thaddeus Stevens said, ' This bill is a measure of 
necessity, not of choice. No one would willingly issue 
paper currency not redeemable on demand, and make it a 
legal tender. It is never desirable to depart from the 
circulating medium which, by the common consent of 
civilized nations, forms the standard of value.' 

" In the Senate the legal-tender clause was adopted 
by only five majority. The senators who supported it 
were keenly alive to its dangerous character. Mr. Fes- 
Benden, chairman of the committee of finance, said of 
the bill, * It proposes something utterly unknown in this 
government from its foundation : a resort to a measure of 
doubtful constitutionality, to say the least of it, which 
has always been denounced as ruinous to the credit of 
any government which has recourse to it ; ... a meas- 
ure which, when it has been tried by other countries, as 
it often has been, has always proved a disastrous failure.' 

" With extreme reluctance he supported the bill, but 
said the committee was bound * that an assurance should 
be given to the country that it was to be resorted to 
only as a j^olicy ; that it was what it professed to be, 
but a temporary measure. I have not heard any man ex- 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 289 

press a contrary opinion, or, at least, any man who has 
spoken on the subject in Congress. ... All the gen- 
tlemen who have written on the subject, except some 
wild speculators on currency, have declared that as a 
policy it would be ruinous to any people ; ajid it has 
been defended, as I have stated, simply and soMy upon the 
ground that it is to he a single measure standiny alone, and 
not to he repeated. ... It is put upon the ground of 
absolute, overwhelming necessity. 

"Mr. Sumner, who supported the bill, said: 'Surely 
we must all be against paper money, we must insist 
upon maintaining the integrity of the Government, and 
we must all set our faces against any proposition like the 
present except as a temporary expedient, rendered im- 
perative by the exigency of the hour. ... A remedy 
which at another moment you would reject is now pro- 
posed. • Whatever may be the national resources, they 
are not now in reach except by summary process. Re- 
luctantly, painfully, I consent that the process should 
issue. And yet I cannot give such a vote without 
warning the Government against the dangers from such 
an experiment. The medicine of the constitution must 
not become its daily bread.' 

" Such was the unanimous sentiment which animated 
Congress in making its solemn pledge to return to the 
old path as soon as the immediate danger should pass. 
The close of the war revealed some change of 
opinion, but the purpose of 1862 was still maintained. 
December 14, 1865, the House of Representatives re- 
solved — 

" That the House cordially concurs in the views of 



290 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

the Secretary of the Treasury in relation to the neces- 
sity of a contraction of the currency with a view to as 
early a resumption of specie payments as the business 
interest of the country will permit; and we hereby 
pledge co-operative action to this end as speedily as 
practicable. 

" This resolution was adopted on a call of the ayes 
and noes, by the decisive vote of one hundred and 
forty-four to six. 

" The last ten years have witnessed such a change 
of sentiment as seldom occurs in one generation. Dur- 
ing that time, we have had a Babel of conflicting theo- 
ries. Every exploded financial dogma of the last two 
hundred years has been revived and advocated. Con- 
gresses and political parties have been agitated and con- 
vulsed by the discussion of old and new schemes to 
escape from the control of the universal laws of value, 
and to reach prosperity and wealth without treading 
the time-worn path of honest industry and sohd values. 
All this recalls Mr. Chase's definition of irredeemable 
paper money. 

" The gr^at conflict of opinion resulting from this 
change of sentiment finds expression in the cries of 
' hard money ' and ' soft money ' which have been so 
constantly echoed from State to State during the last six 
months. Following these, as rallying-cries, the people 
are assembled in hostile political camps, from which they 
will soon march out to fight the Presidential battle of 
1876. 

" The recently invented term ^ soft money ' does not 
convey a very precise notion of the doctrine it is in- 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 291 

tended to describe. In fact, it is applied to the doc- 
trines of several distinct groups of theorists, who differ 
widely among themselves, but who all agree in opposing 
a return to specie as the basis of our monetary system. 

" The scope of these opinions will be seen in the 
declarations which recent public discussions have broupht 
forth. 

(1.) Most of the advocates of soft money deny that 
political economy is a universal science. They insist 
that each nation should have a political economy of its 
own. In pursuance of this opinion, they affirm that our 
country should have a standard of value peculiar to 
itself, and a circulating medium which other nations will 
not use ; in short, a non-exportable currency. 

Beyond the sea, in foreign lands, it [our greenback 
currency] fortunately is not money ; but, sir, when have 
we had such an unbroken career of prosperity in busi- 
ness as since we adopted this non-exportable currency ? ' 
—(Hon. W. D. Kelley.) 

"^ Money should be a thing of or belonging to a 
country, not of the world. An exportable commodity 
is not fitted to be money.'— (Quoted as a motto by 
Henry Carey Baird.) 

"'I desire the dollar to be made of such material 
that it shall never be exported or desirable to carry it 
out of the country.'— (Hon. B. F. Butler, Cooper In- 
stitute, October 15, 1875.) 

"'The venerable Henry C. Carey, under date of 
August 15, 1875, addressed a long letter to the chair- 
man of the Detroit Greenback Convention, in which he 
argues that this country ought to maintain permanently 



292 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

a non-exportable circulation.' He says, ' This important 
idea was first promulgated by Mr. Rauget, thirty-six 
years ago.' 

" I will quote one other financial authority, which 
shows that the honor of this discovery does not belong 
to Rauget, nor to the present century. In his work en- 
titled ' Money and Trade Considered : with a Proposal for 
Supplying the Nation with Money,' published at Edin- 
burgh, 1705, John Law says : 

" ' If a money be established that has no intrinsic 
value, and its extrinsic value be such as it will not be 
exported, nor will not be less than the demand for it 
within the country, wealth and power will be attained, 
and will be less precarious. . . . The paper money herein 
proposed being always equal in quantity to the demand, 
the people will be employed, the country improved, 
manufacture advanced, trade — domestic and foreign — 
carried on, and wealth and power attained ; and [it] not 
being liable to be exported, the people will not be set 
idle, etc., and wealth and power will be less precarious.' 

" The subsequent experiments of Law are fitting 
commentaries. 

" (2.) They propose to abandon altogether the use of 
gold and silver as standards of value or instruments of 
exchange, and hold that the stamp of the government, 
not the value of the material on which it is impressed, 
constitutes money; 

" ' I want the dollar stamped on some convenient and 
cheap material, of the least possible intrinsic value, ... 
and I desire that the dollar so issued shall never be 
redeemed.' — (Hon. B. F. Butler, Cooper Institute.) 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 293 

" ' A piece of pig-metal is just as much money as a 
piece of gold, until the public authority has stamped it 
and said that it shall be taken for so much. . . . Sup- 
pose, then, that instead of taking a bar of silver or a bar 
of pig-metal, the government of the United States takes 
a piece of paper, called a greenback, and says that this 
shall pass for a legal tender in the receipt and expendi- 
ture of government dues, and in all the transactions of 
the people. Suppose this government to be a govern- 
ment of good standing, of sound credit, and responsible 
for its paper. This dollar thus stamped, instead of a 
piece of metal being stamped, is to all intents and pur- 
poses equivalent to a silver dollar when it has been made 
such by the government of the United States.' — (Cam- 
paign speech of Governor Allen, Gallipolis, Ohio, July 
21, 1875.) 

" * The use of gold or other merchandise as money is 
a barbarism unworthy of the age.' — (Wallace P. Groom, 
New York.) 

" ' The pretense of redemption in gold and silver is 
of necessity a delusion and an absurdity.' — (Britton A. 
Hill, Missouri.) 

" ' The government can make money of any material 
and of any shape and value it pleases.' — (Hon. 0. S. 
Halstead, New Jersey.) 

" (3.) They are not agreed among themselves as to 
what this new soft money shall be. They do agree, 
however, that the national banking system shall be abol- 
ished, and that whatever currency may be adopted shall 
be issued directly from the treasury, as the only money 
of the nation. Three forms are proposed : — 



294 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

" First. The legal tenders we now have, their vol- 
ume to be increased and their redemption indefinitely 
postponed. The advocates of this form are the infla- 
tionists proper, who care more for the volume than the 
character of the currency. 

" Second. ' Absolute money ;' that is, printed pieces 
of paper, called dollars, to be the only standard of value, 
the only legal tender for all debts, public and private, the 
only circulating medium. The advocates of this kind of 
' money,' though few in number, claim the highest place 
as philosophers. 

" The ablest defence of this doctrine will be found in 
a brochure of one hundred and eighteen pages, by Britton 
A. Hill, published in St. Louis during the present year 
and entitled ' Absolute Money.' The author says (page 
53): 

" * If such national legal-tender money is not of itself 
sovereign and absolute, but must be convertible into some 
other substance or thing, before it can command universal 
circulation, what matters it whether that other substance 
or thing be interest-bearing bonds or gold or silver coin ? 
. . . The coin despotism cannot be broken by substi- 
tuting in its place the despotism of interest-bearing 
bonds.' 

" Third. A legal-tender note not redeemable, but 
exchangeable, at the will of the holder, for a bond of the 
United States bearing 3.65 per cent, interest, which 
bond shall in turn be exchangeable, at the will of the 
holder, for legal-tender notes. In order that this cur- 
rency shall be wholly emancipated from the tyranny and 
barbarism of gold and silver, most of its advocates insist 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 295 

that the interest on the bonds shall be paid in the pro- 
posed paper money. This financial perpetual motion is 
regarded as. the great discovery of our era, and there are 
numerous claimants for the honor of being the first to 
discover it. 

" Mr. Wallace P. Groom, of New York, has charac- 
terized this currency in a paragraph which has been so 
frequently quoted, that it may be fairly called their 
creed. It is in these words : 

" ' In the interchangeability (at the option of the 
holder) of national paper money with government bonds 
bearing a fixed rate of interest, there is a subtle princi- 
ple that will regulate the movements of finance and com- 
merce as accurately as the motion of the steam-engine is 
regulated by its governor. Such Paper Money Tokens 
would be much nearer perfect measures of value than 
gold or silver ever have been or ever can be. The use 
of gold or other merchandise as money is a barbarism 
unworthy of the age.' 

" (4.) The paper money men are unanimous in the 
opinion that the financial crisis of 1873 was caused by 
an insufficient supply of currency, and that a large in- 
crease will stimulate industry, restore prosperity, and 
largely augment the wealth of this country. 

*' Hon. Alexander Campbell, of Illinois, a leading 
writer of the soft money school, thinks there should now 
be in circulation not less than $1,290,000,000 of legal- 
tender notes. (^North- Western Review, November, 187-3, 
page 152.) 

" John G. Drew, another prominent writer, insists 
that ' as England is an old and settled country, and we 



296 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

are just building ours,' we ought to have at least $60 
per capita, or an aggregate of $2,500,000,000. — (' Our 
Currency : What it is and what it should be/) 

" No doubt the very large vote in Ohio and Pennsyl- 
vania in favor of soft money resulted, in great measure, 
from the depressed state of industry and trade, and a 
vague hope that the adoption of these doctrines would 
bring relief. The discussion in both States was able ; 
and toward the close of the campaign, it was manifest 
that sound principles were every day gaining ground. 
Important as was the victory in those States, it is a great 
mistake to suppose that the struggle is ended. TKe ad- 
vocates of soft money are determined and aggressive, and 
they confidently believe they will be able to triumph in 
1876. 

" It ought to be observed, as an interesting fact of 
current history, that the soft money men are making and 
collecting a literature which cannot fail to delight the 
antiquarian and the reader of curiosities of literature. 
They are ransacking old libraries to find any 

" Quaint and curious 
Volume of forgotten lore " 

which may give support to their opinions. In a recent 
pamphlet, Henry Carey Baird refers to Andrew Yarran- 
ton 'as the father of English political economy.' The 
forgotten treatise which is now enrolled among the pa- 
tristic books of the new school was published in London 
in 1677, and is entitled, ' Enghmd's Improvement by Sea 
and Land. To outdo the Dutch without Fighting, to 
pay Debts without Moneys, and to set at work all the 
Poor of England with the Growth of our own Lands.' 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 297 

" The author proposes a public bank, based on the 
registered value of houses and lands, ' the credit whereof 
making paper go in trade equal with ready money, yea 
better, in many parts of the world than money.' He was 
perhaps the first Englishman who suggested a currency 
based on land. On pages 30-33 of his book may be found 
his draft of a proposed law, which provides ' that all bonds 
or bills issued on such registered houses may be transfer- 
able, and shall pass and be good from man to man in the 
nature of bills of exchange.' 

" The writings of John Law are also finding vigorous 
defenders. Britton A. Hill, in the pamphlet alreadj^ 
quoted, devotes a chapter to his memory, compares him 
favorably with Leibnitz and Newton, and says, ^ John 
Law is justly regarded as one of the most profound think- 
ers of his age, in that he originated the first fundamental 
principle of this proposed absolute money.' The admirers 
of ' father' Yarranton should see to it that the outdoer 
of the Dutch is not robbed of his honors by the great 
Scotsman. 

"English history is being hunted through to find 
some comfort for the new doctrines in the writings of 
that small minority who resisted the Bullion Report of 
1810 and the resumption of cash payments in 1819, and 
continued to denounce them afterwards. History must 
be rewritten. We must learn that Mathias Attwood 
(who ?), not Lord Liverpool, Huskisson, or Peel, was the 
fountain of financial wisdom. Doubleday, whom no 
English writer has thought it worth while to answer, is 
much quoted by the new school, and they have lately 
come to feel the profoundest respect for Sir Archibald 



298 JAMES A. GARFIELD: 

Alison, because of his extravagant assault upon the Re- 
sumption Act of 1819. Alison holds a place in English 
literature chiefly because he wrote a work which fills a 
gap in English history not otherwise filled. 

"In 1845 he wrote a pamphlet entitled * England in 
1815 and 1845; or, a Sufficient and Contracted Cur- 
rency/ which the subsequent financial and commercial 
events in his country have so fully refuted that it has 
slept for a generation in the limbo of things forgotten. 
It is now unearthed, and finds an honored place in the 
new literature. 

"As a specimen of Alison's financial wisdom, we 
quote the following (pages 2, 3) : ' The eighteen years of 
war between 1797 and 1815 were, as all the world knows, 
the most glorious and, taken as a whole, the most pros- 
perous that Great Britain has ever known. . . . Never has 
a prosperity so universal and unheard-of pervaded every 
department of the empire.' He then enumerates the 
evidences of this prosperity, and prominent among them 
is this : ' While the revenue raised by taxation was but 
£21,000,000 in 1796, it had reached £72,000,000 in 
1815 ; and the total expenditures from taxes and loans 
had reached £117,000,000 in 1815.' Happy people, 
whose burdens of taxation were quadrupled in eighteen 
years, and whose expenses, consumed in war, exceeded 
their revenues by the sum of $225,000,000 in gold ! 

" The inflationists have not been so fortunate in aug- 
menting their literary store from the writings and 
speeches of our early American statesmen. Still, they 
have made vigorous efforts to draft into their service any 
isolated paragraph that can be made useful for their pur- 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 299 

pose. So far as I have seen, they have found no comfort 
in this search except in very short extracts from three of 
the great leaders of public thought. The first is from a 
juvenile essay in defence of paper money, written by 
Benjamin Franklin in 1729, when he was twenty-two 
years of age. This has been frequently quoted during 
the last four years. They are not so fond of quoting 
Franklin, the statesman and philosopher, who after a life- 
long experience wrote, in 1783, these memorable words : 

" 1 lament with you the many mischiefs, the injustice, 
the corruption of manners, etc., that attend a depreciated 
currency. It is some consolation to me that I washed 
my hands of that evil by predicting it in Congress, and 
proposing means that would have been effectual to pre- 
vent it if they had been adopted. Subsequent operations 
that 1 have executed demonstrate that my plan was 
practicable but it was unfortunately rejected.' — (Works, 
X. 9.) 

" A serious attempt has been made to capture Thomas 
Jefferson and bring him into the service. The following 
passage from one of his letters to John W. Eppes (Works, 
vi. 140) has been paraded through this discussion with 
all the emphasis of italics, thus : 

" ' Bank paper must he suppressed, and the circulating 
medium must be restored to the nation to tohom it belongs. 
It is the only fund on which they can rely for loans ; it 
is the only resource which can never fail them, and it is 
an abundant one for every necessary purpose. Treasury 
hills bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as 
may be found necessary, thrown into circulation, will take 
the place of so much gold or silver^ which last, when 



300 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

crowded, will find an efflux into other countries, and 
thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary level.' 

" This pnssage was quoted as a strong point for the 
soft-money men in their campaign documents in Ohio, 
last fall. They did not find it convenient to quote the 
great Virginian more fully. When this letter was writ- 
ten, the United States was at war with England, with no 
friendly nation from whom to obtain loans. The demand 
for revenue was urgent, and the treasury was empty. 
Mr. Jefferson had long been opposed to the state banks, 
and he saw that by suppressing them and issuing treas- 
ury notes, with or without interest, the government could 
accomplish two things : destroy state bank currency, and 
obtain a forced loan, in the form of circulating notes. In 
enforcing this view, he wrote from Monticello to Mr. 
Eppes, June 24, 1813 : *I am sorry to see our loans be- 
gin at so exorbitant an interest. And yet, even at that, 
you will soon be at the bottom of the loan-bag. Ours is 
an agricultural nation. ... In such a nation there is one 
and only one resource for loans, sufficient to carry them 
through the expense of a war ; and that will always be 
sufficient, and in the power of an honest government, 
punctual in the preservation of its faith. The fund I 
mean is the mass of circulating coin. Every one knows 
that, although not literally, it is nearly true that every 
paper dollar emitted banishes a silver one from the cir- 
culation. A nation, therefore, making its purchases and 
payments with bills fitted for circulation, thrusts an equal 
sum of coin out of circulation. This is equivalent to bor- 
rowing that sum ; and yet the vendor, receiving payment 
in a medium as effectual as coin for his purchases or pay- 



HIS FINxVNCIAL RECORD. 301 

ments, has no claim to interest. ... In this way I am 
not without a hope that this great, this sole resource for 
loans in an agricultural country might yet be recovered 
for the use of the nation during war ; and, if obtained 
in perpetuum, it would always be sufficient to carry us 
through any war, provided that in the interval between 
war and war all the outstanding paper should be called 
in, coin be permitted to flow in again, and to hold the 
field of circulation until another war should require its 
yielding place again to the national medium.' 

" From this it appears that Jefferson favored the issue 
of treasury notes to help us through a war; but he in- 
sisted that they should be wholly retired on the return of 
peace. His three long letters to Eppes are full of power- 
ful and eloquent denunciations of paper money. The 
soft money men appeal to Jefferson. We answer them 
in his own words : ' The truth is that capital may be pro- 
duced by industry, and accumulated by economy ; but 
jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain 
tricks of paper money.' — (Letter to Eppes, Works, vi. 
239.) 

" Their third attempt to elect some eminent states- 
man as an honorary member of the new school affords a 
striking illustration of a method too often adopted in our 
politics. It was very confidently stated by several ad- 
vocates of soft money that John C. Calhoun had sug- 
gested that a paper money, issued directly by the gov- 
ernaient and made receivable for all public dues, would 
be as good a currency as gold and silver. Mr. Hill 
finally claimed Calhoun's authority in support ^f his ab- 
solute money, and printed on pages 56, 57 of his pam- 



302 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

phlet a passage from a speech of Calhoun's. This extract 
was used in the Ohio campaign with much effect, until it 
was shown that there had been omitted from the passage 
quoted these important words : * leaviny its creditors to 
take it [treasury note circulation] or gold and silver at 
their option! After this exposure, the great nuUifier was 
left out of the canvass. 

" Thus far we have attempted no more than to ex- 
hibit the state of public opinion in regard to the cur- 
rency in 1861-62, the changes that have since occurred, 
and the leading doctrines now held by the soft money 
men. 

" Most of these dogmas are old, and have long ago 
been exploded. All are directly opposed to principles as 
well established as the theorems of Euclid. 



THE DOCTRINE OF HARD MONEY. 

" Believing that this generation of Americans is not 
willing to ignore all past experience, and to decide so 
great an iss-ue as though it were now raised for the first 
time, we shall attempt to state, in brief compass, the 
grounds on which the doctrine of hard money rests. 

"Hard money is not to be understood as implying 
a currency consisting of coin alone (though many have 
held, with Benton, that no other is safe), but that coin 
of ascertained weight and fineness, duly stamped and 
authenticated by the government, is the only safe stand- 
ard of money ; and that no form of credit-currency is 
safe unless it be convertible into coin at the will of the 
holder. 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 303 

MONEY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF EXCHANGE. 

" As preliminary to this discussion, it is necessary to 
determine the functions which money performs as an in- 
strument of exchange. As barter was the oldest form of 
exchange, so it was and still is the ultimate object and 
result of all exchanges. For example : I wish to ex- 
change my commodities or services for commodities or 
services of a different kind. I find no one at hand who 
has what I want, and wants what I have. I therefore 
exchange, or, as we say, sell, my commodities for money, 
which I hold until I find some one who wishes to sell 
what I want to buy. I then make the purchase. The 
two transactions have, in fact, resulted in a barter. It 
amounts to the same thing as though, at the start, I had 
found a man who wanted my commodities, and was will- 
ing to give me in exchange the commodities I desired. 
By a sale and a purchase I have accomplished my object. 
Money was the instrument by which the transactions 
were made. The great French economist, J. B. Say, has 
justly described a sale as half a barter, for we see, in the 
case above stated, that two sales were equivalent, in 
effect, to one act of simple barter. But some time may 
elapse between my sale and the subsequent purchase. 
How are my rights of property secured during the inter- 
val ? That which I sold carried its value in itself as an 
exchangeable commodity ; when I had exchanged it for 
money, and was waiting to make my purchase, the secu- 
rity for my property rested wholly in the money result- 
ing from the sale. If that money be a perfect instrument 
of exchange, it must not only be the lawful measure of 



304 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

that which I sold, but it must, of itself, be the actual 
equivalent in value. If its value depends upon the arbi- 
trary acts of government or of individuals, the results of 
my transaction depend not upon the value of that which 
I sold nor of that which I bought, nor upon my prudence 
and skill, but upon an element wholly beyond my control 
— a medium of exchange which varies in value from day 
to day. 

" Such being the nature of exchanges, we should ex- 
pect to find that so soon as man begins to emerge from 
the most primitive condition of society and the narrow- 
est circle of family life, he will seek a measure and an in- 
strument of exchange among his first necessities. And 
in fact it is a matter of history that in the hunting state 
skins were used as money, because they were the product 
of chief value. In the pastoral state — the next advance 
in civilization — sheep and cattle, being the most valuable 
and negotiable form of property, were used as money. 
This appears in the earliest literature. In the Homeric 
poems oxen are repeatedl^^ mentioned as the standard by 
which wealth was measured. The arms of Diomed were 
declared to be worth nine oxen, as compared with those 
of Glaucos, worth one hundred. A tripod, the first prize 
for wrestlers, in the twenty-third book of the Iliad was 
valued at twelve oxen, and a female captive, skilled in 
industry, at four.* 

" In many languages the name for money is identical 
with that for some kind of cattle. Even our word ^ fee ' is 
said to be the Anglo-Saxon ' feoh,' meaning both money 
and cattle. Sir H. S. Maine, speaking of the primitive 

* Jevon'a " Money and the Mechanism of Exchange," page 21. 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 305 

state of society, says : ' Being counted by the head, the 
kine Avas called capitale, whence the economic term cajyi- 
tal, the law term chattel, and our common name cattle. 

" In the agricultural and manufacturing stage of civi- 
lization, many forms of vegetable and manufactured pro- 
ducts were used as money, such as corn, wheat, tobacco, 
cacao-nuts, cubes of tea, colored feathers, shells, nails, etc, 

"All these species of wealth were made instruments 
of exchange because they w^ere easily transferable, and 
their value was the best known and least fluctuating. 
But the use of each as money was not universal ; in fact, 
was but little known beyond the bounds of a single na- 
tion. Most of them were non-exportable; and though 
that fact would have commended them to the favor of 
some of our modern economists, yet the mass of mankind 
have entertained a different opinion, and have sought to 
find a medium whose value and fitness to be used as 
money would be universally acknowledged. 

" It is not possible to ascertain when and by whom 
the precious metals were first adopted as money ; but for 
more than three thousand years they have been acknowl- 
edged as the forms of material wealth best fitted to be 
the measure and instrument of exchange. Each nation 
and tribe, as it has emerged from barbarism, has aban- 
doned its local, non-exportable medium, and adopted what 
is justly called ' the money of the world.' 

" Coinage was a later device, employed for the sole 
purpose of fat^hioning into a convenient shape the metal 
to be used as money, and of ascertaining and certifying 
officially the weight and fineness of each piece. 

" And here has arisen the chief error in reference to 



306 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

the nature of Inone3^ Because the government coins it, 
names its denomination, and declares its value, many 
have been led to imagine that the government creates it, 
that its value is a gift of the law. 

" The analogy of other standards will aid us at this 
point. Our constitution empowers Congress to fix the 
standard of weights and measures, as well as of values. 
But Congress cannot create extension, or weight, or value. 
It can measure that which has extension ; it can weigh 
that which is ponderable ; it can declare and subdivide 
and name a standard ; but it cannot make length of that 
which has no length ; it cannot make weight of that which 
is imponderable ; it cannot make value of that which has 
no value. Ex nihilo nihil fit. The power of Congress to 
make anything it pleases receivable for taxes is a matter 
wholly distinct from the subject now under discussion. 
Legislation cannot make that a measure of value which 
neither possesses nor represents any definitely ascertained 
value. 

COIN AN INSTRUMENT OF UNIVERSAL CREDIT. 

" Now apply to the operations of exchange a given 
coin, whose weight and fineness are certified by public 
authority. We cannot do this better than by borrowing 
the language of Frederic Bastiat, found in his treatise en- 
titled * Maudit Argent.' He says : 

" * You have a crown. What does it signify in your 
hands ? It is the testimony and the proof that you have 
at some time performed a work ; and, instead of profiting 
by it yourself, you have allowed the community to enjoy 
it, in the person of your client. This crown is the evi- 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 307 

dence that you have rendered a service to society ; and 
it states the value of that service. Moreover, it is the 
evidence that you have not drawn from the community 
the real equivalent, as was your right. In order to ena- 
ble you to exercise that right when and as you please, 
society, by the hand of your client, has given you a recog- 
nition, a title, a bond of the commonwealth, a token, in short 
a crotvn, which differs from other fiduciary titles only in 
this, that it carries its value in itself; and if you can read 
with the eyes of the mind the inscription which it bears, 
you will distinctly decipher these words : ^Render to the 
hearer a se?'vice equivalent to that which he has rendered to 
socieiy ; a value received, stated, proved, and measured hy 
that which is in me.' ... If you now give that crown to 
me as the price of a service, this is the result : your ac- 
count with society for real services is found regular, is 
balanced and closed, . . . and I am justly in the position 
where you were before.' 

" Edmund Burke expressed the same opinion when 
he said, ' Gold and silver are the two great, recognized 
species that represent the lasting, conventional credit of 
mankind.' 

" Three thousand years of experience have proved 
that the precious metals are the best materials of which 
to make the standard of value, the instrument of ex- 
change. They are themselves a store of value ; they are 
durable, divisible, easily transported, and more constant 
in value than any other known substances. In the form 
of dust and bars, as merchandise, their value is precisely 
equal to their declared value as money, less the very 
small cost of coinage. Coin made of these metals meas- 



308 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

ures wealth, because it represents wealtli in itself, just as 
the yard-stick measures length, and the standard pound 
measures weight, because each has, in itself, that which 
it represents. 

" Again, the precious metals are products of labor, 
and their value, like that of all other merchandise, de- 
pends upon the cost of production. A coin represents 
and measures the labor required to produce it ; it may be 
called an embodiment of labor. Of course this statement 
refers to the average cost of production throughout the 
world, and that average has varied but little for many 
centuries. It is a flat absurdity to assert that such a re- 
ality as labor can be measured and really represented by 
that which costs little or no labor. For these reasons the 
precious metals have been adopted by the common law of 
the world as the best materials in which to embody the 
unit of money. 

STATUTES CANNOT REPEAL THE LAWS OF VALUE. 

" The oldest and perhaps the most dangerous delusion 
in reference to money is the notion that it is a creation of 
law ; that its value can be fixed and maintained by au- 
thority. Yet no error has been more frequently refuted 
by experience. Every debasement of the coin, and every 
attempt to force its circulation at a higher rate than the 
market value of the metal it contains, has been punished 
by the inevitable disasters that always follow the viola- 
tion of economic laws. 

" The great parliamentary debate of 1695, on the re- 
coinage of English money, affords an absolute demonstra- 
tion of the truth that legislatures cannot repeal the laws 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 309 

of value. Mr. Lowndes, the secretary of the treasury, 
though he held that a debasement of the coinage should 
be rejected as ^dangerous and dishonorable,' really be- 
lieved, as did a large number of members of Parliament, 
that if, by law, they raised the name of the coin, they 
would raise its value as money. As Macaulay puts it, 
* He was not in the least aware that a piece of metal with 
the king's head on it was a commodity of which the price 
was governed by the same law which governs the price of 
a piece of metal fashioned into a spooa or a buckle ; and 
that it was no more in the power of Parliament to make 
the kingdom richer by calling a crown a pound than to 
make the kingdom larger by calling a furlong a mile. He 
seriously believed, incredible as it may seem, that if the 
ounce of silver were divided into seven shillings instead 
of five, foreign nations would sell us their wines and their 
silks for a smaller number of ounces. He had a consider- 
able following, composed partly of dull men who really 
believed what he told them, and partly of shrewd men 
who were perfectly willing to be authorized by law to 
pay a hundred pounds with eighty.' — (History of Eng- 
land, chapter xxi.) 

"It was this debate that called forth those masterly 
essays of John Locke on the nature of money and coin, 
which still remain as a monument to his genius and an 
unanswerable demonstration that money obeys the laws 
of value and is not the creature of arbitrary edicts. At 
the same time. Sir Isaac Newton was called from those 
sublime discoveries in science which made his name im- 
mortal, to aid the king and Parliament in ascertaining the 
true basis of money. After the most thorough examiua- 



310 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

tion, this great thinker reached the same conclusions. 
The genius of these two men, aided by the enlightened 
statesmanship of Montague and Somers, gave the victory 
to honest money, and preserved the commercial honor of 
England for a century. 

PAPER MONEY AN INSTRUMENT OF CREDIT. 

" In discussing the use of paper as a representative 
of actual money, we enter a new branch of political sci- 
ence, namely, the general theory of credit. We shall go 
astray at once if we fail to perceive the character of this 
element. Credit is not capital. It is the permission 
given to one man to use the capital of another. It is not 
an increase of capital ; for the same property cannot be 
used as capital by both the owner and the borrower of it, 
at the same time. But credit if not abused, is a great 
and beneficent power. By its use the productiveness of 
capital is greatly increased. A large amount of capital 
is owned by people who do not desire to employ it in the 
actual production of wealth. There are many others 
who are ready and willing to engage in productive enter- 
prise, but have not the necessary capital. Now, if the 
owners of unemployed capital have confidence in the hon- 
esty and skill of the latter class, they lend their capital 
at a fair rate of interest, and thus the production of 
wealth will be greatly increased. Frequently, however, 
the capital loaned is not actually transferred to the bor- 
rower, but a written evidence of his title to it is given in- 
stead. If this title is transferable it may be used as a 
substitute for money ; for, within certain limits, it has the 
same purchasing power. When these 'evidences of credit 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 311 

are in the form of checks and drafts, bills of exchange 
and promissory notes, they are largely used as substitutes 
for money, and very greatly facilitate exchanges. But 
all are based upon confidence, upon the belief that they 
represent truly what they profess to represent — actual 
capital, measured by real money, to be delivered on de- 
mand. 

" These evidences of credit have become in modern 
times the chief instruments of exchange. The bank has 
become as indispensable to the exchange of values as the 
railroad is to the transportation of merchandise. It is 
the institution of credit by means of which these various 
substitutes for money are made available. It has been 
shown that not less than ninety per cent, of all the ex- 
changes in the United States are accomplished by means 
of bank credits. The per cent, in England is not less 
than ninety-five. Money is now the small change of 
commerce. It is perhaps owing to this fact that many 
are so dazzled by the brilliant achievements of credit as 
to forget that it is the shadow of capital, not its sub- 
stance ; that it is the sign, the brilliant sign, but not the 
thing signified. Let it be constantly borne in mind that 
the check, the draft, the bill of exchange, the promissory 
note, are all evidences of debt, of money to be paid. If 
not, they are fictitious and fraudulent. If the real capital 
on which they are based be destroyed, they fall with it, 
and become utterly worthless. If confidence in their 
prompt payment be impaired, they immediately depre- 
ciate in proportion to the distrust. 

" We have mentioned among these instruments of 
credit the promissory note. Its character as an evidence 



312 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

of debt is not changed when it comes to us illuminated by 
the art and mystery of plate-printing. Name it national 
bank-note, greenback, Bank of England note, or what you 
will ; let it be signed by banker, president, or king, it is 
none the less an evidence of debt, a promise to pay. It 
is not money, and no power on earth can make it money. 
But it is a title to money, a deed for money, and can be 
made equal to money only when the debtor performs the 
promise — delivers the property which the deed calls for, 
pays the debt. When that is done, and when the com- 
munity knows, by actual test, that it will continue to be 
done, then, and not till then, this credit-currency will in 
fact be the honest equivalent of money. Then it will, 
in large measure, be used in preference to coin, because 
of its greater convenience, and because the cost of is- 
suing new notes in place of those which are worn and 
mutilated is much less than the loss which the community 
suffers by abrasion of the coin. To the extent, therefore, 
that paper will circulate in place of coin, as a substitute 
and an equivalent, such circulation is safe, convenient, 
and economical. And what is the limit of such safe cir- 
culation? Economic science has demonstrated, and the 
uniform experience of nations has proved, that the term 
which marks that limit, the sole and supreme test of 
safety, is the exchangeability of such paper for coin, 
dollar for dollar, at the will of the holder. The smallest 
increase in volume beyond that limit produces deprecia- 
tion in the value of each paper dollar. It then requires 
more of such depreciated dollars to purchase a given 
quantity of gold or merchandise than it did before depre- 
ciation began. In other words, prices rise in comparison 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 313 

with such currency. The fact that it is made a . legal 
tender for taxes and private debts does not free it from 
the inexorable law that increase of volume decreases the 
value of every part. 

" It is equally true that an increase of the precious 
metals, coined or uncoined, decreases their value in com- 
parison with other commodities ; but these metals are of 
such universal currency, on account of their intrinsic 
value, that they flow to all parts of the civilized world, 
and the increase is so widely distributed that it produces 
but a small increase of prices in any one country. Not 
so with an inconvertible paper money. It is not of uni- 
versal currency. It is national, not international. It is 
non-exportable. The whole effect of its depreciation is 
felt at home. The level of Salt Lake has risen ten feet 
during the last thirty years, because it has lio outlet. 
But all the floods of the world have made no perceptible 
change in the general level of the sea. 

" The character of inconvertible paper money, the re- 
lation of its quantity to its value, and its inevitable depre- 
ciation by an increase of volume, were demonstrated in 
the Bullion Report of 1810 by facts and arguments whose 
force and conclusiveness have never been shaken. In 
the great debate that followed, in Parliament and through 
the press, may be found the counterpart of almost every 
doctrine and argument which has been advanced in our 
own country since the suspension of specie payments. 
Then, as now, there were statesmen, doctrinaires, and 
business men who insisted that the bank-notes were not 
depreciated, but that gold had risen in value ; who de- 
nied that gold coin was any longer the standard of value, 



314 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

and declared that a bank-note was * abstract currency.' 
Castlereagh announced in the House of Commons that 
the money standard was ' a sense of value, in reference 
to currency as compared with commodities.' Another soft 
money man of that day said : ^ The standard is neither 
gold nor silver, but something set up in the imagination, to 
be regulated hy public opinion.'' Though the doctrines of 
the Bullion Report were at first voted down in Parlia- 
ment, they could not be suppressed. With the dogged 
persistency which characterizes our British neighbors, 
the debate was kept up for ten years. Every propo- 
sition and counter proposition was sifted, the intelli- 
gence and conscience of the nation were invoked; the 
soft money men were driven from every position they 
occupied in 1811, and at last the ancient standard was 
restored. When the bank redeemed its notes, the dif- 
ference between the mint price and the market price of 
bullion disappeared, and the volume of paper money was 
reduced in the ratio of its former depreciation. During 
the last half century few Englishmen have risked their 
reputation for intelligence by denying the doctrines thus 
established. 

*' These lessons of history cannot be wholly forgotten. 
It is too late to set up again the doctrines of Lowndes 
and Vansittart. They may disturb and distract public 
opinion, but can never again triumph before an intelligent 
tribunal. I commend to the soft money men of our time 
the study of this great debate and that of 1695. When 
they have overturned the doctrines of Locke and Newton 
and of the Bullion Report, it will be time for them to in- 
vite us to follow their new theories. 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 315 

« 

*' But we need not go abroad to obtain illustrations of 
the truth that the only cure for depreciation of the cur- 
rency is convertibility into coin. Our American colonies, 
our Continental Congress, and our State and national gov- 
ernments have demonstrated its truth by repeated and 
calamitous experiments. The fathers who drafted our 
constitution believed they had ' shut and bolted the door 
against irredeemable paper money ; ' and, since then, no 
president, no secretary of the treasury, has proposed or 
sanctioned a paper currency, in time of peace, not re- 
deemable in coin at the will of the holder. Search our 
records from 1787 to 1861, and select from any decade 
twenty of our most illustrious statesmen, and it will be 
found that not less than nineteen of them have left on 
record, in the most energetic language, their solemn pro- 
test and warning against the very doctrines w^e are op- 
posing. 

'' The limits of this article will allow only the briefest 
statement of the evils that flow from a depreciated cur- 
rency, evils both to the government and to the people, 
which overbalance, a thousand to one, all its real or sup- 
posed benefits. The word * dollar' is the substantive 
word, the fundamental condition of every contract, of 
every sale, of every payment, whether at the treasury or 
at the stand of the apple-woman in the street. The dol- 
lar is the gauge that measure every blow of the hammer, 
every article of merchandise, every exchange of property. 
Forced by the necessities of war, we substituted for the 
this dollar the printed promise of the Government to pay 
a dollar. That promise we have not kept. We have 
suspended payment, and have compelled the citizen to 



316 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

receive dishonored paper in place of money. The repre- 
sentative value of that paper has passed, by thousands of 
fluctuations, from one hundred cents down to thirty-eight, 
and back again to ninety. At every change, millions of 
men have suffered loss. In the midst of war, with rising 
prices and enormous gains, these losses were tolerable. But 
now, when we are slowly and painfully making our way 
back to the level of peace — now, when the pressure of hard 
times is upon us, and industry and trade depend for their 
gains upon small margins of profit, the uncertainty is an 
intolerable evil. That uncertainty is increased by doubts 
as to what Congress will do. Men hesitate to invest their 
capital in business, when a vote in Congress may shrink 
it by half its value. Still more striking are the evils of 
such a currency in its effects upon international com- 
merce. Our purchases from and sales to foreign nations 
amount in the aggregate to one billion two hundred mil- 
lion dollars per annum, every dollar of which is measured 
in coin. Those who export our products buy with paper 
and sell for gold. Our importers buy with gold and sell 
for paper. Thus the aggregate value of our international 
exchanges is measured, successfully, by the two stand- 
ards. The loss occasioned by the fluctuation of these 
currencies in reference to each other falls wholly on us. 
We, alone, use paper as a standard. And who, among us, 
bears the loss ? The importer, knowing the risk he runs, 
adds to his prices a sufficient per cent, to insure himself 
against loss. This addition is charged over from importer 
to jobber, from jobber to retailer, until its dead weight 
falls, at last, upon the laborer who consumes the goods. 
In the same way, the exporter insures himself against 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 317 

loss by marking down the prices he will pay for products 
to be sent abroad. In all such transactions capital is 
usually able to take care of itself. The laborer has but 
one commodity for sale, his day's work. It is his sole 
reliance. He must sell it to-day or it is lost forever. 
What he buys must be bought to-day. He cannot wait 
till prices fall. He is at the mercy of the market. Buy- 
ing or selling, the waves of its fluctuations beat against 
him. Daniel Webster never uttered a more striking 
truth than when he said : ' Of all the contrivances for 
cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been 
more effectual than that which deludes them with paper 
money. This is the most effectual of inventions to fertil- 
ize the rich man's field by the sweat of the poor man s 
face.' 

" But here we are met by the interconvertible-bond- 
and-currency men, who offer to emancipate us from the 
tyranny of gold and secure a more perfect standard than 
coin has ever been. Let us see. Our five per cent, 
bonds are now on a par with gold. Any actuary will 
testify that in the same market a 3.65 bond, payable, 
principal and interest, in gold, and having the same time 
to run, is worth but seventy -five cents in gold ; that is, 
thirteen cents less than the present greenback. How 
much less the bond will be worth if its interest be made 
payable in the proposed inconvertible currency, no mortal 
can calculate. It is proposed, then, to make the new 
currency equivalent to a bond which, at its birth, is thir- 
teen cents below the greenback of to-day. We are to 
take a long leap downward at the first bound. But * in- 
terconvertibility ' is the charm, the ' subtle principle,' the 



318 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

great 'regulator of finance/ which will adjust everything. 
The alternate ebb and flow of bond into paper dollar, and 
paper dollar into bond, will preserve an equilibrium, an 
equipoise ; and this level of equipose is the base line that 
will measure the new standard of value. The lad who 
sold his two-dollar dog for fifty dollars, and took his pay 
in pups at ten dollars each, never doubted that he had 
made a profit of forty-eight dollars until he found how 
small a sum the whole litter would sell for in the market. 
" Undoubtedly the beam will lie level that is weight- 
ed with the bond at one end and the paper money at the 
other. But what will be the relation of that level to 
the level of real values ? Both the bond and the cur- 
rency are instruments of credit, evidences of debt 
They cannot escape the dominion of those universal 
laws that regulate prices. If made by law the only le- 
gal tender, such a currency wouUi doubtless occupy the 
field. But what would be the result ? To a certain ex- 
tent the bonds themselves would be used as currency. 
The clearing-house banks of New York would doubtless 
be glad to get interest-bearing bonds instead of the 
government certificates of indebtedness, bearing no in- 
terest, which, for convenience, they now use in the 
settlement of their balances. The reserves of public 
and private banks, which now amount to more than 
two hundred million dollars, would largely be held in 
these interest-bearing bonds. Thus the first step would 
result in compelling the government to pay interest on 
a large portion of the reserves of all the banks, public, 
and private. It will hardly be claimed, however, that 
anybody will part with his property for bonds of this 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 319 

description, to hold as ca permanent investment. Capi- 
tal in this country is worth more than 3.65 per cent. 
How, then, will the new currency be set afloat? The 
treasury can pay it out only in exchange for the new 
bonds or in payment of public dues. Shall we violate 
public faith by paying the gold bonds already oustand- 
ing in this new and greatly depreciated paper ? Or 
shall we, as some of the soft money men have proposed, 
enter upon a vast system of public works in order to 
put the new currency in circulation ? No doubt means 
would be found to push it into circulation, so long as 
enterprise or speculation should offer a hope of greater 
profits than 3.65 per cent. Once out, it would inevita- 
bly prove a repetition of the old story: an artificial 
stimulation of business and of speculation ; large issues 
of currency; inflation of prices, depreciation of paper, 
delirium, prostration ; * up like a rocket, then down like 
a stick.' They tell us that this cannot happen, because 
as the volume of paper increases, the rate of interest will 
fall, and when it reaches 3.65 per cent, the currency 
will be exchanged for bonds. But all experience is 
against them. Inflation has never brought down the 
rate of interest. In fact, the rate is always highest in 
countries afllicted with irredeemable paper money. For 
all practical purposes, the proposed currency would be 
unredeemed and irredeemable ; and this is what its ad- 
vocates desire. General Butler sees ' no more reason 
for redeeming the measure of value than for redeeming 
the yardstick or the quart-pot.' This shows the utmost 
confusion of ideas. We do not redeem the yardstick or 
the quart-pot. They are, in reality, what they profess 



320 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

to be. There is nothing better for measuring yards than 
a yardstick. But, in regard to the yardstick, we do 
what is strictly analogous to redemption when applied 
to currency. We preserve our yardstick undiminished 
and unchanged ; and, by the solemn sanction of penal 
law, we require that it shall be applied to the purchase 
and sale of all commodities that can be measured by the 
standard of length. The citizen who buys by a longer 
yardstick or sells by a shorter one than our standard, is 
punished as a felon. Common honesty requires that we 
restore, and with equal care preserve from diminution 
or change, our standard of value. 

" It has been already shown that the soft money 
men desire a vast increase of currency above the present 
volume. The assumed necessity for such an increase 
was a leading topic in the debates that preceded the 
late elections. 

" The argument, often repeated, ran substantially 
thus : 

" Fellow-citizens ! You are in great distress. The 
smoke of your furnaces no longer ascends to the sky ; 
the clang of your mills and workshops is no longer heard. 
Your workers in metal and miners in coal are out of 
employment. Stagnation of trade, depression of busi- 
ness, and public distress are seen on every hand. What 
has caused these disasters ? Manifestly, a lack of money. 
Is there any man among you who has money enough ? 
If there be, let him stand forth and declare it. Is there 
one wJio does not need more money to carry on his 
business ? [Cries of No I No !] The hard money men 
have brought you to this distress, by contracting the 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 321 

volume of the currency, by destroying the people's 
money, your money. And they propose to complete 
your ruin by forcing th^ country to resume specie pay- 
ments. We come to save you from this ruin. We in- 
sist that you shall have more mone}^, not less. We are 
resolved to make and keep the volume of currency 
' equal to the wants of trade.' 

"These assumptions were answered by undeniable 
facts. It was shown that our large volume of paper cur- 
rency had helped to bring on the crisis of 1873, and had 
greatly aggravated its effects ; but that the main cause 
was speculation, over-trading, and, in some branches of 
business, an over-production beyond the demands of the 
market. 

" A striking illustration of the effect of over-produc 
tion was drawn from the history of one of the interior 
counties of Northern Ohio. In the midst of a wilder- 
ness, far away from the centres of trade, the pioneers 
commenced the settlement of the county at the beginning 
of the present century. Year by year their number was 
augmented. Each new settler was compelled to buy 
provisions for his family until he could raise his first 
crop. For several years this demand afforded a ready 
market, at good prices, for all the products of the farm. 
But in 1818, the supply greatly exceeded the demand. 
The wheat market was so glutted that twenty bushels 
were frequently offered for one pound of tea, and often 
refused, because tea could be bought only for money, 
and wheat could hardly be sold at all. 

" If the soft money men of our time had been among 
those farmers, they would have insisted that more 

21 



322 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

money would raise the price of their wheat and set 
the ploughboys at work. But the pioneers knew that 
until the stock on hand was reduced, the production of 
another bushel to be sold would be labor wasted. The 
cry for more currency shows that soft money men have 
confounded credit with capital, and vaguely imagine that 
if more paper dollars were printed they could be bor- 
rowed without security. 

" In whatever form the new currency be proposed, 
whether in the so-called absolute money or in the 'in- 
terconvertible paper money tokens,' as a relief from dis- 
tress, it is a delusion and a snare. All these schemes 
are reckless attempts to cut loose from real money — the 
money known and recognized throughout the world — 
and to adopt for our standard that which a great gold 
gambler of Wall Street aptly called 'phantom gold.' 
Their authors propose a radical and dangerous innova- 
tion in our political system. They desire to make the 
National Treasury a bank of issue, and to place in the 
control of Congress the vast money power of the nation, 
to be handled as the whim, the caprice, the necessities 
of political parties m:iy dictate. Federalist as Hamilton 
was,, he held that such a power was too great to be cen- 
tralized in the hands of one body. This goes a hundred 
leagues beyond any measure of centralization that has 
yet been adopted or suggested. 

"In view of the doctrines herein advocated, what 
shall be said of the present condition of our currency ? 
It is depreciated. Its purchasing power is less than that 
of real money, by about fourteen per cent. Our notes 
are at a discount j not because the ability of the nation 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 323 

to redeem them is questioned, but partly because its 
good faith is doubted, and partly because the volume of 
these notes is too great to circulate at par. What that 
volume ought to be, no man can tell. Convertibility 
into coin is a perfect test, and is the only test. 



NECESSITY OF RESUMPTION. 

" The duty of the government to make its currency 
equal to real money is undeniable and imperative. First, 
because the public faith is most solemnly pledged, and 
this alone is a conclusive and unanswerable reason why 
it should be done. The perfidy of one man, or of a 
million men, is as nothing compared with the perfidy of u 
nation. The public faith was the talisman that brought 
to the treasury thirty-five hundred million dollars in 
loans, to save the life of the nation, which was not worth 
saving if its honor be not also saved. The public faith 
is our only hope of safety from the dangers that may 
assail us in the future. The public faith was pledged to 
redeem these notes in the very act which created them, 
and the pledge was repeated when each additional issue 
was ordered. It was again repeated in the act of 1869, 
known as the ^ act to strengthen the public credit,' and 
yet again in the act of 1875, promising redemption in 
1879. 

" Second. The government should make its currency 
equal to gold because the material prosperity of its peo- 
ple demands it. Honest dealing between man and man 
requires it. Just and equal legislation for the people, 
safety in trade, domestic and foreign, security in busi- 



324 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

ness, just distribution of the rewards of labor — none of 
these are possible until the present false and uncertain 
standard of value has given place to the real, the certain, 
the universal standard. Its restoration will hasten the 
revival of commercial confidence, which is the basis of all 
sound credit. 

" Third. Public morality demands the re-establish- 
ment of our ancient standard. The fever of speculation 
which our fluctuating currency has engendered cannot be 
allayed till its cause is destroyed. A majority of all the 
crimes relating to money, that have been committed in 
public and private life since the war, have grown out of 
the innumerable opportunities for sudden and inordinate 
gains which this fluctuation has offered. 

" The gold panic of 1869, which overwhelmed thou- 
sands of business men in ruin, and the desperate gamb- 
ling in gold which is to-day absorbing so many miUions 
of capital that ought to be employed in producing wealth, 
were made possible only by the difference between paper 
and gold. Resumption will destroy all that at a blow. 
It will enable all men to see the real situation of their 
affairs, and will do much toward dissipating those unreal 
and fascinating visions of wealth to be won without in- 
dustry, which have broken the fortunes and ruined the 
morals of so many active and brilliant citizens. 

" My limits will not allow a discussion of the hard- 
ship and evils which it is feared will accompany the res- 
toration of the old standard. Whatever they may be, 
they will be light and transient in comparison with those 
we shall endure if the doctrines of soft money prevail. I 
am not able to see why the approach to specie may not 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 325 

be made so gradual that the fluctuation in any one month 
will be less than that which we have suffered from month 
to month since 1869. We have travelled more than half 
the distance which then separated us from the gold stand- 
ard. 

" A scale of appreciation like that by which England 
resumed in 1821 would greatly mitigate the hardships 
arising from the movement. Those who believe that the 
volume of our currency is but little above its normal 
level need not fear that there will be much contraction ; 
for, with free banking, they may be sure that all the 
paper which can be an actual substitute for money will 
remain in circulation. No other ought to circulate. 

" The advocates of soft money are loud in their de- 
nunciation of the English resumption act of 1819, and 
parade the distorted views of that small and malignant 
minority of English writers who have arraigned the act 
as the cause of the agricultural distress of 1822, and the 
financial crash which followed, in 1825. The charge is 
absolutely unjust and unfounded. In 1822 a committee 
of the House of Commons, having investigated the causes 
of the agricultural distress of that and the preceding year, 
found that it was due to the operation of the corn laws, 
and to the enormous wheat crops of the two preceding 
seasons. Their report makes no reference to the resump- 
tion act as a cause of the distress. In both that and the 
following year, a few of the old opponents of hard money 
offered resolutions in the House of Commons, declaring 
that the resumption act was one of the causes of the 
public distress. The resolution of 1822 was defeated by 
a vote of one hundred and forty-one to twenty-seven, and 



326 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

that of 1823 was defeated by the still more decisive vote 
of one hundred and ninety-two to thirty. An overwhelm- 
ing majority of intelligent Englishmen look back with 
pride and satisfaction upon the act of resumption as a 
just and beneficent measure. 

"But methods and details of management are of 
slight importance in comparison with the central purpose 
so often expressed by the nation. From that purpose 
there should be no retreat. To postpone its fulfilment 
beyond the day already fixed is botli dangerous and 
useless. It will make the task harder than ever. Re- 
sumption could have been accomplished in 1867 with 
less difficulty than it can be in 1879. It can be accom- 
plished more easily in 1879 than at any later date. It is 
said that we ought to wait until the vast mass of private 
debts can be adjusted. But when will that be done? 
Horace has told us of a rustic traveller who stood on the 
bank of a river, waiting for its waters to flow by, that he 
might cross over in safety. * At ille labitur et labetur in 
omne volubilis wvum,' The succession of debts and debt- 
ors will be as perpetual as the flow of the river. 

" We ought to be inspired by the recent brilliant ex- 
ample of France. Suffering unparalleled disasters, she 
was compelled to issue a vast volume of legal-tender 
notes in order to meet her obligations. But so soon as 
the great indemnity was paid, she addressed herself reso- 
lutely to the work of bringing her currency up to the 
standard of gold. During the last two years she has 
reduced her paper currency nearly seven hundred and 
fifty million francs; and now it is substantially at par. 

" Amidst all her disasters she has kept her financial 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 327 

credit untarnished. And this has been her strength and 
her safety. To meet the great indemnity, she asked her 
people for a loan of three billion francs ; and twelve and 
a half times the amount was subscribed. In August, 
1874, the American Minister at Paris said, in one of 
his despatches, ' Though immense amounts were taken 
abroad, yet it seems they are all coming back to France, 
and are now being absorbed in small sums by the com- 
mon people. The result will be, in the end, that almost 
the entire loan will be held in France. Every person in 
the wdiole country is wishing to invest a few hundred 
francs in the new loan, and it has reached a premium of 
four and one half to five per cent' 

" Our public faith is the symbol of our honor and the 
pledge of our future safety. By every consideration of 
national honor, of public justice, and of sound policy, let 
us stand fast in the resolution to restore our currency to 
the standard of gold." 

On the 5th of April, 1880, Mr. We;iver, the leader 
of the Greenback party in the House, arose and addressed 
the Speaker as follows : 

" I move to suspend the rules and adopt the resolu- 
tions which I send to the desk. 

" The Clerk read as follows : 

" ^Resolved, That it is the sense of this House that 
all currency, whether metallic or paper, necessary for the 
use and convenience of the people should be issued and 
its volume controlled by the Government, and not by or 
through the bank corporations of the country ; and when 
so issued should be a full legal tender in payment of all 
debts, public and private. 



328 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

" * 2. Resolved, That, in the judgment of this House, 
that portion of the interest-bearing debt of the United 
States which shall become redeemMble in the year 1881, 
or prior thereto, being in amount $782,000,000, should not 
be refunded beyond the power of the Government to call 
in said obligations and pay them at any time, but should 
be paid as rapidly as possible, and according to contract. 
To enable the Government to meet these obligations, the 
mints of the United States should be operated to their 
full capacity in the coinage of standard silver dollars, and 
such other coinage as the business interests of the country 
may require.' " 

As soon as the Clerk had finished reading the resolu- 
tions. General Garfield rose, and said : 
. " Mr. Speaker. — I never heard the provisions of this' 
resolution until it was read from the desk a few moments 
ago. It has, however, attained some historical importance 
by being talked about a good deal in the newspapers, 
and by blocking the other business of the House for some 
weeks. As I listened to its reading I noticed that it is 
one of those mixed propositions which has some good 
things in it which everybody would probably like and vote 
for if they were separated ; but the good things are used 
to sugar over what, in my judgment, is most pernicious. 

" There are three things in this resolution to which I 
wish to caU the attention of the House before they vote. 
The first is a proposition of the largest possible propor- 
tion, that all money, whether of coin or paper, that is to 
circulate in this country, ought to be manufactured and 
issued directly by the Government. I stop there. I want 
to say on that proposition to the majority in this House, 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 329 

who are so strongly opposed to what they call centraliza- 
tion, that never was there a measure offered to the Con- 
gress of so vast and far-reaching centralism. It would 
convert the Treasury of the United States into a manu- 
factory of paper money. It makes the House of Repre- 
sentatives and Senate, or the caucus of the party which 
happens to be in the majority, the absolute dictator of 
the financial and business affairs of this country. This 
scheme surpasses all the centralism and all the Ctesarism 
that were ever charged upon the Republican party in the 
wildest days of the war, or in the events growing out of 
the war. 

" Now, I say, without fear of contradiction, that prior 
to 1862 the wildest dreamer in American finance was 
never wild enough to propose such a measure of central- 
ization as that single proposition implies. The Govern- 
ment should prescribe general laws in reference to the 
quality and character of our paper money, but should 
never become the direct manufacturer and issuer of it. 

" The second point involved in this resolution is that 
the Government of the United States shall pay all its 
pubhc debts in this manufactured money, manufactured 
to order at the Treasury factory. Notwithstanding the 
solemn and acknowledged pledge of the Government to 
pay the principal and interest of its public debt in coin, 
this resolution declares that in this legal-tender paper the 
public debt shall be payable. 

" The third point I wish to call attention to — 

" Mr. Ewing. — Will my colleague allow me to inter- 
rupt him for a moment ? 

"Mr. Garfield.— Certainly. 



330 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

" Mr. Ewing. — You certainly misunderstand the reso- 
lution. It declares that all public debts of the United 
States shall be paid in the money of the contract, and 
not in any coin or money the Government may choose to 
pay them in. 

" Mr. Garfield. — Any money the Government may 
issue is by this resolution declared to be lawful money, 
and, therefore, is to be made the money of the contract 
by the legislation proposed to-day. 

" Mr. Ewing. — That is a mere quibble based on a 
total misconstruction of the resolution. 

*' Mr. Garfield. — Answer in your own time. 

" Now, the third point in this resolution is that there 
shall be no refunding of the $782,000,000 to fall due 
this year and next, but all that shall be paid. How ? 
Out of the resources of the nation ? Yes ; but the 
money to be manufactured at the Treasury is to be 
called part of these resources. Print it to death — that 
is the way to dispose of the public debt, says this res- 
olution. 

" I have only to say that these three make the triple- 
headed monster of centralization, inflation, and repudia- 
tion combined. This monster is to be let loose on the 
country as the last spawn of the d^ing party that thought 
it had a little life in it a year ago. It is put out at this 
moment to test the courage of the two political parlies; 
it is offered at this point when the roar of the Presiden- 
tial contest comes to us from all quarters of the country. 
In a few moments we shall see what the political parties 
will do with this beast. All I have to say, for one, is, 
meet and throttle it; in the name of honesty, in the 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 331 

name of the public peace and prosperity, in the name of 
the rights of individual citizens of this country against 
centralism, worse than we ever dreamed of, meet it and 
fight it like men. Let both parties show their courage 
by meeting boldly and putting an end to its power for 
mischief. Let the vote be taken." 

On the 10th of April, 1880, the House being in 
Committee of the Whole on the Appropriation Bill, the 
following debate occurred between General Garfield and 
Mr. McMahon, of Ohio : 

" Mr. McMahon (Dem.), of Ohio, submitted an amend- 
ment repealing the sections of the statutes providing for 
the biennial examination of pensioners, but leaving with 
the commissioner power to order special examinations 
when necessary and to increase or reduce pensions in 
accordance with right and justice, but no pension shall 
be reduced without notice to the pensioner. The amend- 
ment concludes as follows : 

" ' In order to provide for the payment of arrears of 
pensions the Secretary of the Treasury is directed to 
issue immediately in payment thereof, as they may be 
adjusted, the $10,000,000 in legal tender currency now 
in the United States Treasury, kept as a special fund for 
the redemption of fractional currency.' 

" Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, raised the point of order that 
the amendment Wits not germane to the bill, changed ex- 
isting law, and did not retrench expenditures. If the 
amendment could be ruled in order a proposition to break 
wholly through the whole resumption business could be 
also ruled in order." 



332 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

SPEECH OF MR McMAHON. 

" Mr. McMahon, of Ohio, in advocacy of that por- 
tion of the amendment providing for the reissue of the 
$10,000,000 in the Treasury, said that he had been asked 
to go farther in that direction than he proposed ; but he 
had offered a proposition which, he thought, would be 
entirely unobjectionable on the Republican side of the 
House. Why should this $10,000,000 of idle money be 
kept in the Treasury when it was clear that all of the 
fractional currency (for the redemption of which this 
money was ostensibly held) had been redeemed ? Why 
should the pensioners be told that there was a defi- 
ciency in the Treasury, and that, therefore, their arrear- 
ages of pensions could not be paid ? He had been sur- 
prised to hear the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Garfield) 
make a point of order against the pensioners of the coun- 
try, because he had supposed that that gentleman owed 
an allegiance to them which was superior to that which 
he owed to Wall Street.* He made use of that language 
advisedly, because there were no people interested in 
keeping that $10,000,000 in the Treasury except those 
who were in favor of contracting the currency. The 
Secretary of the Treasury was a good deal like his col- 
league (Mr. Garfield), and was always in favor of ac- 
tion in the interest of capital. As an illustration of Mr. 
Sherman's financial policy he said, that if that gentleman 
were dying his last words would be ' Borrow money on 
government bonds to put up a tombstone over me.' The 
Treasury was loaded down with a reserve of $330,000,- 
000 in gold and currency, and yet the Secretary of the 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 333 

Treasury told the people that there must be either addi- 
tional taxes or an additional issue of bonds. Here were 
$10,000,000 now in the Treasury, a part of the reserve 
authorized by law. The purpose for which it has been 
placed there has long since passed away, and it should 
now be put out to pay the arrears of pensions instead of 
issuing $10,000,000 of bonds of which the interest would 
amount to $400,000 a year." 

EEPLY OF MR. GARFIELD. 

" Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, said that the attempt of his 
colleague (Mr. McMahon) to set himself up as the cham- 
pion of the pensioners, was quite too thin a disguise to 
deceive anybody. The Republican side of the House had 
tried again and again to authorize the Secretary of the 
Treasury to extend the sales of four per cent, bonds suffi- 
ciently to cover the matter of the payment of the arrears 
of pensions, and the House, at the last session had been 
brought to a vote on that subject at least twice, and but 
for the resistance on the Democratic side of the House 
that proposition would have prevailed and the pensioners 
would have been paid their arrearages. The responsi- 
bility for not paying them rested, therefore, on those who 
resisted that proposition, not on those who made it. No 
man could torture anything which he had said to-day on 
the point of order into an unwillingness that the pension- 
ers should have their pensions paid or that all remedial 
legislation should be adopted to make their payment 
easy. It was quite too late in the day for his colleague 
to intimate that there was objection on his (Mr. Gar- 
field's) part to have the pensioners paid. He had made 



334 JAMES A. GARFIELD : 

the point of order simply because he looked upon the 
amendment as an entering wedge, the general purpose 
of which was to break down the system of reserves, on 
which the maintenance of resumption depended. His 
colleague, whose distinguished knowledge as a financier 
no one would question, had amazed him very much by 
saying that the subsidiary currency played no part in the 
general problem of resumption. Did not his colleague 
know perfectly well that a subsidiary currency went to 
make up the bulk of circulating medium, just as much as 
greenbacks did, and just as much as gold did ? The re- 
lations between himself and his colleague had never been 
such as to warrant either in using an impolite or indecent 
expression toward the other, and therefore his colleague 
had no more right to say, either as a matter of fact or as 
a matter of fair inference, that he (Mr. Garfield) owed his 
allegiance to Wall Street than he would have a right to 
say that his colleague owed his allegiance to the grog- 
geries and whiskey shops of Dayton. And as he (Mr. 
Garfield) would not say that, he did not think that his 
colleague was entitled to say the other. 

" Mr. McMahon stated that he was tolerably familiar 
with his colleague's public career, and he asked his col- 
league whether in all the discussions that had taken place 
in this country on the financial question his colleague 
could show one vote of his that was not based upon the 
idea of speedy resumption, no matter at what cost, even 
when his colleague's own party had separated from him 
on that point in the forty-third Congress ? 

" Mr. Garfield replied that, according to his own 
notions of proper legislative praise, his colleague could 



HIS FINANCIAL RECORD. 335 

not coiinterpraise him any more than in stating that he 
(Mr. Garfield) had always cast his vote in favor of the 
resumption of specie payment. If he ever had cast a 
vote which was not against all schemes to delay that un- 
necessarily, or to prevent it, then he had cast a vote of 
which his conscience and his judgment disapproved. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] He had cast as 
many votes as any member on the floor against Wall 
Street and against the business of gold gambling, which 
had been destroyed by resumption — g^ld gambling that 
had locked up $10,000,000 from the business capital of 
the country for fifteen years, locked it up away from all 
profitable investment and converted Wall Street into a 
faro hell. (Applause.) 

*' Mr. Bright (Dem.), of Tennessee. — Has not Wall 
Street been simply transferred to the Treasury of the 
United States. 

"Mr. Garfield. — I hope that enough of the gold and 
silver of the country that has been hitherto locked up in 
Wall Street for gold gambling purposes has been trans- 
ferred to the Treasury of the United States to break 
down the bulls and bears of Wall Street permanently and 
to maintain honest money in the country. (Applause.) 

*' Mr. McMahon inquired if it was wrong to order the 
$10,000,000 to be reissued, when under the law they 
should be paid out in redemption of fractional currency. 

" Mr. Garfield replied that if his colleague would in- 
quire and find out how much of that $10,000,000 could 
be spared, leaving enough to meet all the obligations of 
|the reserve, he would be willing to vote that surplus for 
the purpose of paying arrears of pensions." 



CHAPTER IX. 

the credit mobilier and de golyer charges general 

Garfield's triumphant vindication. 

History of the Credit Mobilier Scheme — The Pacific Railway — Government 
Aid extended to H. Oakes Ames' Connectioa with the Road — Congress 
Investigates the Credit Mobilier — General Garfield's sworn Testimony 
before the Committee — He denies all Improper Connection with the 
Scheme — Publishes a Review of the Case — An Exhaustive Discussion 
of the Case — Testimony in the Matter — General Garfield's Response to 
the Charges of 1872 — Mr. Ames' Testimony Analyzed — Mr. Ames' 
Memoranda — The Check on the Sergeant-at-Arms — General Garfield's In- 
terviews with Mr. Ames during the Investigation— •Conclusions — Trium- 
phant Vindication of General Garfield — All the Charges against him — 
Letter of Judge Poland — General Garfield Unanimously Acquitted of 
Wrong-doing — The De Golyer Pavement Company — Charges against 
General Garfield — His Triumphant Vindication of hia Course — The 
Truth established at last. 

It could hardly be expected that one who had taken such 
an active and prominent part in our public affairs should 
escape the attacks of slander. General Garfield has ex- 
perienced the fate of most public men. He has been 
misjudged, and false charges have been brought against 
him. Inasmuch as these charges have been made, it 
seems but just that we should reproduce them here, and 
then present General Garfield's triumphant and masterly 
vindication of his course. 

It was charged that he was a sharer in the unjust 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 337 

profits of the Credit Mohilier ring in Congress. To un- 
derstand this question thoroughly it will be necessary to 
relate the history of that iniquitous scheme. 

One of the great public works of the Union, of which 
the whole country is justly proud, is the Pacific Rail- 
road, extending from the Missouri River to the Pacific 
Ocean. The early history of the great road is a story 
of constant struggles and disappointments. It seemed to 
the soundest capitalists a mere piece of fool-hardiness to 
undertake to build a railroad across the continent and 
over the Rocky Mountains, and, although Government 
aid was liberally pledged to the undertaking, it did 
not, for a long time, attract to it the capital it needed. 
At length, after many struggles, the doubt which had 
attended the enterprise was ended. Capital was found, 
and with it men ready to carry on the work. In Sep- 
tember, 1864, a contract was entered into between the 
Union Pacific Company and H. W. Hoxie, for the build- 
ing by said Hoxie of one hundred miles of the road from 
Omaha west. Mr. Hoxie at once assigned this contract 
to a company, as had been the understanding from the 
first. This company, then comparatively unknown, but 
since very famous, was known as the Credit Mobilier of 
America. The company had bought up an old charter 
that had been granted by the Legislature of Pennsylvania 
to another company in that State, but which had not 
been used by them. 

" In 1865 or 1866, Oakes Ames, then a member of 
Congress from the State of Massachusetts, and his 
brother Oliver Ames, became interested in the Union 
Pacific Company, and also in the Credit Mobilier Com- 

22 



338 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

pany, as the agent for the construction of the road. The 
Messrs. Ames were men of very large capital, and of 
known character and integrity in business. By their ex- 
ample and credit and the personal efforts of Mr. Oakes 
Ames, many men of capital were induced to embark in 
the enterprise, and to take stock in the Union Pacific 
Company, and also in the Credit Mobilier Company. 
Among them were the firm of S. Hooper & Co., of Boston, 
the leading member of which (Mr. Samuel Hooper) was 
then and is now a member of the House ; Mr, John B. 
Alley, then a member of the House from Massachusetts, 
and Mr. Grimes, then a senator from the State of Iowa. 
Notwithstanding the vigorous efforts of Mr. Ames and 
others interested with him, great difficulty was expe- 
rienced in securing the required capital. 

"In the spring of 1867, the Credit Mobilier Company 
voted to add fifty per cent, to their capital stock, which 
was then $2,500,000 ; and to cause it to be readily taken, 
each subscriber to it was entitled to receive as a bonus 
an equal amount of first mortgage bonds of the Union 
Pacific Company. The old stockholders were entitled to 
take this increase, but even the favorable terms offered 
did not induce all the old stockholders to take it, and 
the stock of the Credit Mobilier Company was never 
considered worth its par value until after the execution 
of the Oakes Ames contract hereinafter mentioned. On 
the 16th day of August, 1867, a contract was executed 
between the Union Pacific Railroad and Oakes Ames, 
by which Mr. Ames contracted to build 667 miles of 
the Union Pacific Road at prices ranging from $42,000 
to $96,000 per mile, amounting in the aggregate to 



CREDIT JIOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 339 

$47,000,000. Before the contract was entered into, it 
was understood that Mr. Ames was to transfer it to seven 
trustees who were to execute it, and the. profits of the 
contract were to be divided among the stockholders in 
the Credit Mobilier Company, who should comply with 
certain conditions set out in the instrument transferring 
the contract to the trustees. Subsequently, all the stock- 
hohlers of the Credit Mobilier Company complied with 
the conditions named in the transfer, and thus became 
entitled to share in any profits said trustees might make 
in executing the contract. All the large stockholders in 
the Union Pacific were also stockholders in the Credit 
Mobilier, and the Ames contract and its transfer to 
trustees were ratified by the Union Pacific and received 
the assent of the great body of stockholders, but not 
of all. After the Ames contract had been executed, it 
was expected by those interested that, by reason of the 
enormous prices agreed to be paid for the work, very 
large profits would be derived from building the road, 
and very soon the stock of the Credit Mobilier was un- 
derstood id be worth much more than its par value. 
The stock was not in the market, and had no fixed 
market value, but the holders of it, in December, 1867, 
considered it worth at least double the par value, and in 
January or February, 1868, three or four times the par 
value ; but it does not appear that these facts were 
generally or publicly known, or that the holders of the 
stock desired they should be." 

As will be seen from the above statement, the stock- 
holders of the Credit Mobilier were also stockholders in 
the Union Pacific Company. 



340 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Like all great corporations of the present day, the 
Union Pacific Road was largely dependent upon the aid 
furnished by the Government for its success. The man- 
agers of the company, being shrewd men, succeeded in 
placing all the burdens and risks of the enterprise upon 
the General Government, while they secured to them- 
selves all the profits to be derived from the undertaking. 
'The Railroad Company was endowed by Act of Con- 
gress with twenty alternate sections of land per mile, 
and had Government-loans of $16,000 per mile for about 
200 miles ; thence $32,000 per mile through the Alkali 
Desert, about 600 miles, and thence in the Rocky Moun- 
tains $48,000 per mile. The railroad company issued 
stock to the extent of about $10,000,000. This stock 
was received by stockholders on their payment of five 
per cent, of its face. When the Credit Mobilier came on 
the scene, all the assets of the Union Pacific were turned 
over to the new company in consideration of full paid 
shares of the new company's stock and its agreement to 
build the road. The Government, meanwhile, had al- 
lowed its claim for its loan of bonds to become a second 
instead of a first mortgage, and permitted the Union 
Pacific Road to issue first mortgage bonds, which took 
precedence as a lien on the road. The Government lien 
thus became almost worthless, as the new mortgage, 
which took precedence, amounted to all the value of the 
road. The proceeds of this extraordinary transaction 
went to swell the profits of the Credit Mobilier, which 
had nothing to pay out except for the mere cost of con- 
struction. This also explains why some of the dividends 
of the latter company were paid in Union Pacific bonds. 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 341 

As a result of these processes, the bonded debts of the 
railroad exceeded its cost by at least $40,000,000." 

Mr. Ames was deeply interested in the scheme, be- 
ing, indeed, one of its principal managers. Being a mem- 
ber of Congress, he was peculiarly prepared to appre- 
ciate the value of Congressional assistance in behalf of 
the Credit Mobilier. It would seem that the object of 
the Credit Mobilier was to drain money from the Pacific 
road, and consequently from the Government, as long as 
possible. Any legislation on the part of Congress de- 
signed to protect the interests of the Government, would, 
as a matter of course, be unfavorable to the Credit Mo- 
bilier, and it was the aim of that corporation to prevent 
all such legislation. The price agreed upon for building 
the road was so exorbitant, and afforded such an iniqui- 
tous profit to the Credit Mobilier, that it was very cer- 
tain that some honest friend of the people would demand 
that Congress should protect the Treasury against such 
spoliation. It was accordingly determined to interest in 
the scheme enough members of Congress to prevent any 
protection of the national treasuiy at the expense of the 
unlawful gains of the Credit Mobilier. Mr. Oakes Ames, 
being in Congress, undertook to secure the desired hold 
upon his associates. The plan was simply to secure them 
by bribing them, and for this purpose a certain portion 
of the Cr.'-dit Mitbilier stock was placed in the hands of 
Mr. Ames, as trustee, to be used by him as he thought 
best for the interests of the company. 

Provided with this stock, Mr. Ames went to Wash- 
ington, in December, 1867, at the opening of the session 
of Congress. " During that month," say the Poland 



342 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Committee in their report, " Mr. Ames entered into con- 
tracts with a considerable number of members of Con- 
gress, both senators and representatives, to let them 
have shares of stock in the Credit Mobilier Company at 
par, with interest thereon from the first day of the pre- 
vious July. It does not appear that in any instance he 
asked any of these persons to pay a higher price than the 
par value and interest, nor that Mr. Ames used any spe- 
cial effort or urgency to get these persons to take it. In 
all these negotiations Mr. Ames did not enter into aijy de- 
tails as to the value of the stock, or the amount of divi- 
dend that might be expected upon it, but stated generally 
that it would be good stock, and in several instances said 
he would guarantee that they should get at least ten per 
cent, on their money. Some of these gentlemen, in their 
conversations with Mr. Ames, raised the question whether 
becoming holders of this stock would bring them into any 
embarrassment as members of Congress in their legisla- 
tive action. Mr. Ames quieted such suggestions by say- 
ing it could not, for the Union Pacific had received from 
Congress all the grants and legislation it wanted, and they 
should ask for nothing more. In some instances those 
members who contracted for stock paid to Mr. Ames the 
money for the price of the stock, par and interest; in 
others, where they had not the money, Mr. Ames agreed 
to * carry ' the stock for them until they could get the 
money, or it should be met by the dividends. Mr. 
Ames was at this time a large stockholder in the Credit 
Mobilier, but he did not intend any of those transactions 
to be sales of his own stock, but intended to fulfil all 
these contracts from stock belonging to the company." 



CREDIT MOBILLER — TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 343 

"It is very easy," says the New York Tribune, "to 
see that under these circumstances the stock of the Credit 
Mobilier was a very handsome investment, provided it 
could be purchased at par. Here was wherein Oakes 
Ames was such a profitiible friend to Congressmen and 
senators. He let them in, as he phrases it, on the 
ground floor. They got their stock at par, and the divi- 
dends which were ready to be paid were more than 
enough to pay for tlie stock. This is what is called in 
Wall Street parlance making one hand wash the other. 
The actual value of the stock thus sold at $100 a share 
would have been to anybody out of the circle of Oakes 
Ames' friends not purchasable for less than $300 or 
$400. But there was a film of decency thrown over the 
transactions by Mr. Ames, in charging several months' 
interest upon the stock at the time it was sold to the 
members of Congress. This interest had accrued while 
he Wits holding it to see where it could be placed to the 
best advantage." 

The motive of Mr. Ames in thus " placing," as he 
termed it, this immensely profitable stock among the 
members of Congress, is thus stated by the Poland Com- 
mittee : 

" In relation to the purpose and motive of Mr. Ames 
in contracting to let members of Congress have Credit 
Mobilier stock at par, which he and all other owners 
of it considered worth at least double that sum, the 
committee, upon the evidence taken by them and sub- 
mitted to the House, cannot entertain a doubt. When 
he said he did not suppose the Union Pacific Company 
would ask or need further legislation, he stated \.hat 



344 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



he believed to be trae, but he feared the interests of the 
ight suffer by adverse legi 



road might suffer by adverse legislation, and what he 
desired to accomplish was to enlist strength and friends 
in Congress who would resist any encroachment upon 
or interference with the rights and privileges already 
secured, and to that end wished to create in them an 
interest identical with his own. This purpose is clearly 
avowed in his letters to McComb, copied in the evi- 
dence, where he says he intends to place the stock 
' where it will do the most good to us,' and again, ' We 
want more friends in this Congress.' In his letter to 
McComb, and also in his statement prepared by coun- 
sel, he gives the philosophy of his action, to wit : That 
he has found there is no difficulty in getting men to 
look after their own property. The committee are also 
satisfied that Mr. Ames entertained a fear that when 
the true relations between the Credit JMobilier Com- 
pany and the Union Pacific became generally known, 
and the means by which the great profits expected to 
be made were fully understood, there was danger that 
Congressional investigation and action would be in- 
voked. The members of Congress with whom he dealt 
were generally those who had been friendly and favor- 
able to a Pacific railroad, and Mr. Ames did not fear or 
expect to find them favorable to movements hostile to 
it, but he desired to stimulate their activity and watch- 
fulness in opposition to any unfavorable action, by giv- 
ing them a personal interest in the success of the enter- 
prise, especially so far as it affected the interest of the 
Credit Mobilier Company. - 

" Cn the 9th day of December, 1867, Mr. C. C. 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 345 

Wiishburn, of Wisconsin, introduced in the House a 
bill to regulate by law the rates of transportation over 
the Pacific railroads. Mr. Ames, as well as others 
interested in the Union Pacific Road, were opposed to 
this, and desired to defeat it. Other measures ap- 
parently hostile to that company were subsequently 
introduced into the House, by Mr. Washburn, of Wis- 
consin, and Mr. Washburn, of Illinois. The committee 
believe that Mr. Ames, in his distribution of the stock 
had specially in mind the hostile efforts of the Messrs. 
Washburn, and desired to gain strength to secure their 
defeat. The reference in one of his letters, to Wash- 
burn's move makes this quite apparent." 

" The more recent legislation," says the New York 
Tribune, "which Ames' transactions with members of 
Congress had reference to, may be stated in a few 
words. Secretary Boutwell insisted that half the earn- 
ings of the road in carrying mails and troops for the 
Government should be applied to the payment of in- 
terest on the loans that the Government had made to 
the road. The legislation obtained overruled the Sec- 
retary and enabled the road to postpone payment of 
interest until the bonds fell due — some thirty years 
hence. To sum up, it may be briefly stated that the 
Union Pacific and Credit Mobilier together got the pro- 
ceeds of liberal United States land grants, of donations 
of communities near the road, and the entire subsidy 
of Government bonds, as a clear profit. The proceeds 
of the mortgage bonds which displaced the Government 
lien, were sufficient to have built the road. To the 
original stockholders in the Union Pacific, the profit 



346 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

was something almost incredible. A share bought for 
$5 subscription became $100 Credit Mobilier, which 
paid, as we have seen in the evidence concerning the 
legislators who received it, dividends that amounted 
to at least treble its nominal value. It is, of course, 
evident that all legislation which favored the Union 
Pacific Railroad swelled the profits of the legislators 
who became stockholders in the Credit Mobilier. The 
awkwardness of this position was vastly increased by 
the thin disguise of purchase being torn away, under 
which the profit-bearing stock had been really the gift 
of Oakes Ames. The denial of the facts converted the 
transaction into a criminal act." 

Reduced to phdn English, the story of the Credit 
Mobilier is simply this : The men entrusted with the 
management of the Pacific Eoad made a bargain with 
themselves to build the road for a sum equal to about 
twice its actual cost, and pocketed the profits, which 
have been estimated at about Thirty Millions of Dol- 
lars — this immense sum coming out of the pockets of 
the taxpayers of the United States. This contract was 
made in October, 1867. 

'' On June 17, 1868, the stockholders of the Credit 
Mobilier received 60 per cent, in cash, and 40 per cent, 
in stock of the Union Pacific Railroad; on the 2d of 
July, 1868, 80 per cent, first mortgage bonds of the 
Union Pacific Railroad, and 100 per cent, stock ; July 
3, 1868, 75 per cent, stock, and 75 per cent, first mort- 
gage bonds; September 3, 1868, 100 per cent, stock, 
and 75 per cent, first mortgage bonds ; December 19, 
1868, 200 per cent, stock ; while, before this contract 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 347 

was made, the stockholders had received, on the 26th 
of April, 1866, a dividend of 100 per cent, in stock 
of the Union Pacific Railroad; on the 1st of Aj^ril, 
1867, 50 per cent, of first mortgage bonds were dis- 
tributed; on the 1st of July, 1867, 100 per cent, in 
stock again." 

After offering this statement, it is hardly necessary 
to add that the vast property of the Pacific Road, which 
should have been used to meet its engagements, was soon 
swallowed up by the Credit Mobilier. 

This is the story of the Credit Mobilier, as far as the 
fiicts have been permitted to become known. We shall 
now see how it came to make such a noise in the world. 

Mr. Ames was not the only member of the company 
engaged in " placing " the stock where it would benefit 
the corporation. Dr. Durant, the President of the Pacific 
Railway, was engaged in securing his friends in the same 
way, and he received a portion of the stock to be used in 
this manner. Mr. Henry S. McComb, of Delaware, who 
was also interested in the scheme, now put in his claim 
for a part of the stock, which was being used as a cor- 
ruption fund, " for his friends." His claim involved him 
in a quarrel with Oakes Ames, and Colonel McComb had 
the mortification of seeing the stock he claimed assigned 
to Mr. Ames, for the use o^ his friends. 

In the summer of 1872, in the midst of the Presiden- 
tial campaign, the quarrel between Ames and McComb 
reached such a point, that it was impossible to keep it 
quiet. McComb made public the facts in the case, and 
published a list of the Congressmen with whom Ames 
had said he had *' placed " the stock, naming the number 



348 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

of shares sold to each. These were : — Schuyler Colfax, 
Vice-President of the United States; Henry Wilson, Sen- 
ator from Massachusetts ; James W. Patterson, Senator 
from New Hampshire ; John A. Logan, Senator from 
Illinois; James G. Blaine, Member of Congress from 
Maine, and Speaker of the House of Representatives; 
W. D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania; James A. Garfield, of 
Ohio ; J.'imes Brooks, of New York ; John A. Bingham, 
of Ohio; Henry L. Dawes, of Massachusetts ; Glenui W. 
Scofiehl, of Pennsylvania, and one or two others, who 
were not at the time of the exposure members of Con- 



As may be supposed, the publication of the charges, 
and the list of names, created a storm of excitement 
throughout the country. The members implicated, as a 
rule, indignantly denied the charge of having purchased 
or owned Cr^jdit Mobilier stock. They declared them- 
selves incapable of holding such stock, as it would have 
been, they said, a high crime against morality and de- 
cency to be connected in any way with the Credit Mo- 
bilier. These denials were generally accepted. The per- 
sons making them had always borne high characters for 
veracity and integrity. Partisan orators and newspapers 
made the most of the charges, and made them so odious 
that the persons implicated repeated their denials with 
more earnestness. 

"When Congress assembled, in December, 1872, Mr. 
Blaine, the Speaker of the House, wishing to vindicate 
his character, which he declared had been unjustly as- 
sailed, asked the House of Representatives to appoint a 
committee to inquire into the charges of Ames and 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 349 

McComb, and to report the result of their investigations. 
The committee was appointed, with Mr. Poland, of Ver- 
mont, as its chairman. An effort was made to conduct 
the investigation in secret ; but the indignant public de- 
manded and obtained an open trial. On the 18th of 
February, 1873, the committee reported to the House 
the result of its investigation. 

General Garfield was one of those charged with par- 
ticipating in the corrupt profits of the Credit Mohilier. 
He made public an emphatic denial of the charge, and 
cordially aided in the effort to have the charges investi- 
gated and the truth brought to light. Feeling that he 
had nothing to conceal, he was anxious that the most 
searching inquiry should be made into the matter. On 
the 14th of January, 1873, he appeared before the in- 
vestigating committee, and testified as follows, under 
oath : 

" The first I ever heard of the Credit Mobilier was 
sometime in 1866 or 1867 — I cannot fix the date — when 
George Francis Train called on me and said he was or- 
ganizing a company to be known as the Credit Mobilier 
of America, to be formed on the model of the Credit 
Mobilier of France ; that the object of the company was 
to purchase lands and build houses along the line of the 
Pacific Railroad at points where cities and villages were 
likely to spring up ; that he had no doubt that money 
thus invested would double or treble itself each year; 
that subscriptions were limited to $1,000 each, and he 
wished me to subscribe. He showed me a long list of 
subscribers, among them Mr. Oakes Ames, to whom he 
referred me for further information concerning the enter- 



350 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

prise. I answered that I had not the money to spare, 
and if I had I would not subscribe without knowing more 
about the proposed organization. Mr. Train left me, 
sajdng he would hold a place open for me, and hoped I 
would conclude to subscribe. The same day I asked Mr. 
Ames what he thought of the enterprise. He expressed 
the opinion that the investment would be safe and profit- 
able. 

" I heard nothing further on the subject for a year or 
more, and it was almost forgotten, when sometime, I 
should say during the long session of 18G8, Mr. Ames 
spoke of it again, said the company had organized, was 
doing well, and, he thought, would soon pay large divi- 
dends. He said that some of the stock was left, or was 
to be left, in his hands to sell, and I could take the 
amount which Mr. Train had offered me by paying the 
$1,000 and accrued interest. He said if I was not able 
to pay for it he would hold it for me until I could pay or 
until some of the dividends were payable. I told him I 
would consider the matter, but would not agree to take 
any stock until I knew, from an examination of the char- 
ter and the conditions of the subscription, the extent to 
which I would become pecuniarily liable. He said he was 
not sure, but thought a stockholder would only be liable 
for the par value of his stock ; that he had not the stock 
and papers with him, but would have them after awhile. 
From the case as presented I should probably have taken 
the stock if I had been satisfied in regard to the extent 
of pecuniary liability. Thus the matter rested, I think, 
until the following year. During that interval I under- 
stood that there were dividends due amounting to nearly' 



CREDIT MOBILIER— TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 351 

fchree times the par value of the stock. But in the mean- 
time I had heard that the company was involved in some 
controversy with the Pacific Railroad and that Mr. Ames' 
right to sell the stock was denied. When I next saw 
Mr. Ames I told him I had concluded not to take the 
stock. There the matter ended, so far as I was con- 
cerned, and I had no further knowledge of the company's 
operations until the subject began to be discussed in the 
newspapers last fall (1872). Nothing was ever said to 
me by Mr. Train or Mr. Ames to indicate or imply that 
the Credit Mobilier was or could be in any way con- 
nected with the legislation of Congress for the Pacific 
Railroad or any other purpose. Mr. Ames never gave 
nor offered to give me any stock or other valuable thing 
as a gift. I once asked and obtained from him, and 
afterwards repaid to him, a loan of $300 ; that amount is 
the only valuable thing I ever received from or delivered 
to him. I never owned, received, or agreed to receive 
any stock of the Credit Mobilier or of the Union Pacific 
Railroad, nor any dividends or profits arising from either 
of them." 

Not content with denying the charges against him 
under oath, General Garfield, on the 3d of March, 1873, 
gave notice in the House that he should publish a review 
of the matter, and a full vindication of his course. 

In May, 1873, he published the following review. 
We reproduce it entire, notwithstanding its length, as it 
is of the greatest importance to those who would know 
the true history of the case. The old charges will be 
revived and used during the Presidential campaign by 
partisan enemies of the Republican candidate, and it is 



352 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

only right that every friend of General Garfield should 

have his masterly and unanswerable vindication at hand. 

The review was prefaced with the following note : 

" Since this review was written, the telegraph has 
announced the death of Mr. Ames. This circumstance 
may raise a question as to the propriety of publishing 
this paper ; but I gave notice in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, on the 3d of March last, that I should pub- 
lish such a review, and I then indicated its scope and 
character. Furthermore, justice to the living cannot 
wrong the memory of the dead. 

" In revising these pages, as they are passing through 
the press, I am glad to find no expressions, prompted by 
a spirit of bitterness, which the presence of death re- 
quires me to erase. 

" J. A. Garfield." 
"Washington, D. C, May 8, 1873." 



REVIEW OF THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE 
CREDIT MOBILIER COMPANY, 

/ And an Examination of that Portion of the Testimony 
\ taken by the Committee of Investigation and reported to 
the House of Representatives at the last session of the 
forty-second Congress, which relates to Mr. Garfield. 

The events of the late winter recall forcibly a decla- 
ration made more than twenty-two centuries ago, by a 
man who possessed a profound knowledge of human na- 
ture and society. In answering a grave charge made 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 353 

against his public conduct, he said he did not stand on 
equal ground with his accusers, for the reason that 
people listen to accusation more readily than to defence. 
This remark has sometimes been thought cynical and 
unjust ; but there is much in our recent history that 
gives it force. 

In no period of the political life of this country has 
the appetite for scandal been keener, or its exercise less 
restrained, than during the last year. One of our most 
brilliant and influential journalists, in an address delii'- 
ered a few days since to a convention of his professional 
brethren in Indiana, while speaking of the present tone 
of the press, used this emphatic language : 

The law presumes a man to be innocent until he is proved 
guilty. 

The press, not merely usurping the functions of the law in ar- 
raigning a man whom the constable has no warrant to arrest, goes 
still farther, and assumes him, prima facie, to be guilty. After 
many weeks, if the case of the accused comes to trial, he is ac- 
quitted ; the law makes him an honest man ; but there is the 
newspaper which has condemned him, and cannot, with a dozen 
retractions, erase the impression left and the damage done by a 
single paragraph. 

It might not be becoming in a layman, who feels in 
his own case the force of this paragraph, to volunteer 
such a declaration ; but it is quite proper for him to tes- 
tify to its truth when thus forcibly stated. 

This paragraph from the address of the journalist 
finds a striking illustration in the history of the subject 
now under review. 

In the autumn of 1872, during the excitement of 
the Presidential campaign, charges of the most serious 

23 



354 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

character were made against ten or twelve persons who 
were then, or had recently been, senators and represen- 
tatives in Congress, to the effect that, five years ago, 
they had sold themselves for sundry amounts of stock 
of the Credit Mobilier Company and bonds of the Pacific 
Railroad Company. The price at which different mem- 
bers were alleged to have bartered away their personal 
honor and their official influence was definitely set down 
in the newspapers ; their guilt was assumed, and the 
public vengeance was invoked not only upon them, but 
also upon the party to which most of them belonged. 

CEEDIT MOBILIER INVESTIGATION. 

By a resolution of the House, introduced by one of 
the accused members, and adopted on the first day of the 
late session, an investigation of these charges was or- 
dered. The parties themselves and many other wit- 
nesses were examined ; the records of the Credit Mobi- 
lier Company and of the Pacific Railroad Company were 
produced ; and the results of the investigation were 
reported to the House on the 18th of February. The 
report, with the accompanying testimony, was brought 
up in the House for consideration on the 25th of Feb- 
ruary, and the discussion was continued until the sub- 
ject was finally disposed of, three days before the close 
of the session. The investigation was scarcely begun 
before it was manifest that the original charge, that stock 
was given to members as a consideration for their votes, 
was wholly abandoned, there being no proof whatever to 
support it. 

But the charge assumed a new form, namely : That 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 355 

the stock bad been sokl to members, at a price known to 
be greatly below its actual value, for the purpose of se- 
curing their legislative influence in favor of those who 
were managing and manipulating the Pacific Railroad 
for their own private advantage and to the injury both 
of the trust and of the United States. Eight of those 
against whom charges had been made in the public 
press, myself among the number, were still members of 
the House of Representatives, and were specially men- 
tioned in the report. The committee recommended the 
adoption of resolutions for the expulsion of Messrs. 
Ames and Brooks, the latter on charges in no way con- 
nected with Mr. Ames or the other members mentioned. 
They recommended the expulsion of Mr. Ames for an 
attempt to influence the votes and decisions of mem- 
bers of Congress by interesting them in the stock of 
the Credit Mobilier, and through it in the stock of the 
Union Pacific Railroad. They found that though Mr. 
Ames in no case disclosed his purpose to these mem- 
bers, yet he hoped so to enlist their interest that they 
would be inclined to favor any legislation in aid of the 
Pacific Railroad and its interests, and that he declared 
to the managers of the Credit Mobilier Company at the 
time that he was thus using the stock which had been 
placed in his hands by the company. 

Concerning the members to whom he had sold, or 
offered to sell, the stock, the committee say that they 
" do not find that Mr. Ames, in his negotiations with 
the persons above named, entered into any detail of the 
relations between the Credit Mobilier Company and the 
Union Pacific Company, or gave them any specific in- 



356 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

formation as to the amount of dividends they would be 
likely to receive farther than has been already stated, 
[viz., that in some cases he had guaranteed a profit of 
ten per cent.] . . . They do not find as to the members 
of the present House above named, that they were aware 
of the object of Mr. Ames, or that they had any other 
purpose in taking this stock than to make a profitable 
investment. . . . They have not been able to find that 
any of these members of Congress have been afi'ected in 
their official action in consequence of interest in the 
Credit Mobilier stock. . . . They do not find that either 
of the above-named gentlemen in contracting with Mr. 
Ames had any corrupt motive or purpose himself or was 
aware Mr. Ames had any. Nor did either of them 
suppose he was guilty of any impropriety or even in- 
delicacy in becoming a purchaser of this stock." And 
finally, that "the committee find nothing in the con- 
duct or motives of either of these members in taking 
this stock, that calls for any recommendation by the 
committee of the House." (See pp. viii. ix. x.) 

In the case of each of the six members just referred 
to, the committee sum up the results of the testimony, 
and from that summary the conclusions above quoted 
are drawn. In regard to me, the committee find : That, 
in December, 1867, or January, 1868, I agreed to pur- 
chase ten shares of Credit Mobilier stock of Mr. Ames, 
for $1,U00, and the accrued interest from the previous 
July; that in June, 1868, Mr. Ames paid me a check 
on the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House for $329, as a 
balance of dividends on the stock, above the purchase- 
price and accrued interest; and that thereafter, there 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 357 

were no pfiyments or other transactions between us, or 
any communication on the subject until the investigation 
began in December last. (See Report, p. vii.) 

I took the first opportunity offered by the completion 
of public business to call the attention of the House to 
the above summary of the testimony in reference to me. 
On the 3d of March I made the following remarks, in 
the House of Representatives, as recorded in the Con- 
gressional Globe for that day : 

Mr. Garfield, of Ohio. — I rise to a personal explanation. Dur- 
ing the late investigation by the committee of which the gentle- 
man from Vermont (Mr. Poland) was the chairman, I pursued 
what seemed to be the plain path of duty, to keep silence except 
when I was called upon to testify before the committee. When 
testimony was given which appeared to be in conflict with mine, I 
waited, expecting to be called again if anything was needed from 
me in reference to these discrepancies. I was not recalled ; and 
when the committee submitted their report to the House, a con- 
siderable portion of the testimony relating to me had not been 
printed. 

In the discussion which followed here I was prepared to sub- 
mit some additional facts and considerations in case my own con- 
duct came up for consideration in the House j but the whole sub- 
ject was concluded without any direct reference to myself, and 
since then the whole time of the House has been occupied with 
the public business. I now desii-e to make a single remark on 
this subject in the hearing of the House. Though the committee 
acquitted me of all charges of corruption in action or intent, yet 
there is in the report a summing up of the facts in relation to me 
which I respectfully protest is not warranted by the testimony. I 
say this with the utmost respect for the committee, and without 
intending any reflection upon them. 

I cannot now enter upon the discussion ; but I propose, before 
long, to make a statement to the public, setting forth more fully 
the grounds of my dissent from the summing up to which I have 



358 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

referred. I will only say now that the testimony which I gave 
before the committee is a si.atement of the facts in the case as I 
have understood them from the beginning. More than three 
years ago, on at least two occasions, I stated the case to two per- 
sonal friends substantially as I stated it before the committee, and 
I here add that nothing in my conduct or conversation has at any 
time been in conflict with my testimony. For the present I de- 
sire only to place on record this declaration and notice. 

In pursuance of this notice, I shall consider so much 
of the history of the Credit Mobilier Company as has 
any relation to myself. To render the discussion intel- 
ligible, I will first state briefly the offences which that 
corporation committed, as found by the committees of the 
House. 

HISTOEY OF THE CREDIT MOBILIER COMPANY. 

The Credit Mobilier Company is a corporation organ- 
ized under the laws of the State of Pennsylvania, and 
authorized by its charter to purchase and sell various 
kinds of securities and to make advances of money and 
credit to railroad and other improvement companies. Its 
charter describes a class of business which, if honestly 
conducted, any citizen may properly engage in. 

On the 16th of August, 1867, Mr. Oakes Ames 
made a contract with the Union Pacific Railroad Com- 
pany to build six hundred and sixty-seven miles of road, 
from the one hundredth meridian westv/ard, at rates rang- 
ing from $42,000 to $96,000 per mile. For executing this 
contract he was to receive in the aggregate $47,925,000, 
in cash or in the securities of the company. 

On the 15th of October, a triple contract was made 
between Mr. Ames of the first party seven persons as 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 359 

trustees of the second part, and the Cr.'dit Mobilier Com- 
pany of the third part, by the terms of which the Credit 
Mobilier Company was to advance money to build the 
road, and to receive thereon seven per cent, interest and 
two and a half per cent, commission ; the seven trustees 
were to execute the Ames contract, and the profits there- 
on were to be divided among them, and such other stock- 
holders of the Credit Mobilier Company as should deliver 
to them an irrevocable proxy to vote the stock of the 
Union Pacific held by them. The principal stockholders 
of the Credit Mobilier Company were also holders of a 
majority of the stock of the Union Pacific Railroad. 

On the fiice of this agreement, the part to be per- 
formed by the Credit Mobilier Company as a corporation 
was simple and unobjectionable. It was to advance 
money to the contractors and to receive therefor about 
ten per cent, as interest and commission. This explains 
how it was that in a suit in the courts of Pennsylvania 
in 1870, to collect the State tax on the profits of the 
company, its managers swore that the company had never 
declared dividends to an aggregate of more than twelve 
present. The company proper did not receive the profits 
of the Oakes Ames contract. The profits were paid only 
to the seven trustees and to such stockholders of the 
Credit Mobilier as had delivered to them the proxies on 
their Pacific Railroad stock. In other words, a ring in- 
side the Credit Mobilier obtained the control both of that 
corporation and of the profits of the Ames contract. 

By a private agreement made in writing October 16, 
1867, the day after the triple contract was signed, the 
seven trustees pledged themselves to each other so to 



360 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

vote all the Pacific Railroad stock which they held in 
their own right or by proxy, as to keep in power all the 
members of the then existing board of directors of the 
railroad company not appointed by the President of the 
United States, or such other persons as said board should 
nominate. By this agreement, the election of a majority 
of the directors was wholly within the power of the seven 
trustees. From all this it resulted that the Ames con- 
tract and the triple agreement made in October amounted 
in fact to a contract made by seven leading stockholders 
of the Pacific Railroad Company with themselves ; so 
that the men who fixed the price at which the road was 
to be built were the same men who would receive the 
profits of the contract. 

The wrong in this transaction consisted, first in the 
fact that the stockholding directors of the Pacific Rail- 
road, being the guardians of a great public trust, con- 
tracted with themselves; and, second, that they paid 
themselves an exorbitant price for the work to be done, a 
price which virtually brought into their own possession, 
as private individuals, almost all the property of the rail- 
road company. The six hundred and sixty-seven miles 
covered by the contract included one hundred and thirty- 
eight miles already completed, the profits on which inured 
to the benefit of the contractors. (See Report of Credit 
Mobilier Committee, No. 2, p. xiii.) 

The Credit Mobilier Company had already been en- 
gaged in various enterprises before the connection with 
the Ames contract. George Francis Train had once been 
the principal owner of its franchises, and it had owned 
some western lands (Wilson's Report, pp. 497, 8) ; but 



'^^ 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 361 

its enterprises had not been very remunerative, and its 
stock had not been worth par. The triple contract of 
October, 1867, gave it at once considerable adilitional 
value. It should be borne in mind, however, that the 
relations of the Credit Mobilier Company to the seven 
trustees, to the Oakes Ames contract, and to the Pacific 
Railroad Company, were known to but few persons until 
long afterward, and that it was for the interest of the 
parties to keep them secret. Indeed, nothing was known 
of it to the general public until the facts were brought 
out in the recent investigations. 

In view of the facts above stated, it is evident that a 
purchaser of such shares of Credit Mobilier stock as were 
brought under the operation of the triple contract would 
be a sharer in the profits derived by that arrangement 
from tlie assets of the Pacific Railroad, a large part of 
which consisted of bonds and lands granted to the road 
by the United States. The holding of such stock by a 
member of Congress would depend for its moral qualities 
wholly upon the fact whether he did or did not know 
of the arrangement out of which the profits would come. 
If he knew of the fraudulent arrangement by which the 
bonds and lands of the United States delivered to the 
Union Pacific Railroad Company for the purpose of con- 
structing its road were to be paid out at enormously 
extravagant rates, and the proceeds to be paid out as 
dividends to a ring of stockholders made the Credit Mo- 
bilier Company, he could not with any propriety hold 
such stock, or agree to hold it, or any of its proceeds. 
And for a member of Congress, knowing the facts, to hold 
under advisement a proposition to buy tKis stock would 



362 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

be morally as wrong as to hold it and receive the profits 
upon it. If it was morally wrong to purchase it, it was 
morally wrong to hesitate whether to purchase it or not. 

I put the case on the highest ethical ground, and ask 
that this rule be applied in all its severity in judging of 
my relations on this subject. 

PROPOSITIONS TO BE DISCUSSED. 

The committee found, as already stated, that none of 
the six members to whom Mr. Ames sold, or proposed to 
sell, the stock, knew of this arrangement. I shall, how- 
ever, discuss the subject only in so far as relates to me, 
and shall undertake to establish three propositions : 

First. That I never purchased nor agreed to pur- 
chase the stock, nor received any of its dividends. 

Second. That though an offer was made, which I 
had some time under advisement, to sell me $1,000 worth 
of the stock, I did not then know, nor had I the means of 
knowing, the real conditions with which the stock was 
connected, or the method by which its profits were to be 
made. 

Third. That my testimony before the committee is a 
statement of the facts as I have always understood them ; 
and that neither before the committee nor elsewhere has 
there been, on my part, any prevarication or evasion on 
the subject. 

MR. GARFIELD'S TESTIMONY. 

My testimony was delivered before the investigating 
committee on the 14th of January. That portion which 
precedes the cross-examination, I had written out soon 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 363 

after the committee was appointed. I quote from it, 
with the cross-examiaation, in full, as found recorded on 
pp. 128 to 131: 

Washington, D. C, January 14, 1875. 
J. A. Garfield, a member of the United States House of llepre- 
sentatives, from the State of Ohio, having been duly sworn, made 
the following statement : 

The first I ever heard of the Credit Mobilier was sometime in 
1866 or 1867 — I cannot fix the date — when George Francis Train 
called on me and said he was organizing a company to be known 
as the Credit Mobilier of America, to be formed on the model of 
the Credit Mobilier of France ; that the object of the company 
was to purchase land and build houses along the line of the Pa- 
cific Railroad at points where cities and villages were likely to 
spring up ; that he had no doubt that money thus invested would 
double or treble itself each year ; that subscripcions were limited 
to $1,000 each, and he wished me to subscribe. He showed me a 
long list of subscribers, among them Mr. Oakes Ames, to whom 
he referred me for further information concerning the enterprise. 
I answered that I had not the money to spare, and if I had I 
would not subscribe without knowing more about the proposed 
organization. Mr. Train lefc me, saying he would hold a place 
open for me, and hoped I would yet conclude to subscribe. The 
same day I asked Mr. Ames what he thought of the enterprise. 
He expressed the opinion that the investment would be safe and 
profitable. 

1 heard nothing further on the subject for a year or more, and 
it was almost forgotten, when sometime, I should say, during the 
long session of 1868, Mr. Ames spoke of it again ; said the com- 
pany had organized, was doing well, and he thought would soon 
pay large dividends. He said that some of the stock had been 
left or was to be left in his hands to sell, and I could take the 
amount which Mr. Train had offered me, by paying the $1,000 
and the aiccrued interest. He said if I was not able to pay for it 
then, he would hold it for me till I could ^pay, or until some of 
the dividends were payable. I told him I would consider the 



364 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

matter ; but would not agree to take any stock until I knew, froni 
an examination of the character and the conditions of the sub- 
scription, the extent to which I should become pecuniarily liable. 
He said he was not sure, but thought a stockholder would be liable 
only for the par value of his stock ; that he had not the stock and 
papers with him, but would have them after a while. 

From the case, as presented, I should probably have taken the 
stock if I had been satisfied in regard to the extent of pecuniary 
liability. Thus the matter rested for some time, I think until the 
following year. During that interval I understood that there 
were dividends due amounting to nearly three times the par value 
of the stock. But in the meantime I had heard that the com- 
pany was involved in some controversy with the Pacific Railroad, 
and that Mr. Ames's right to sell the stock was denied. When I 
next saw Mr. Ames I told him I had concluded not to take the 
stock. There the matter ended, so far as I was concerned, and I 
had no further knowledge of the company's operations until the 
subject began to be discussed in the newspapers last fall. 

Nothing was ever said to me by Mr. Train or Mr. Ames to in- 
dicate or imply that the Credit Mobilier was or could be in any 
way connected with the legislation of Congress for the Pacific 
Railroad or for any other purpose. Mr. Ames never gave, nor 
offered to give, me any stock or other valuable thing as a gift. I 
once asked and obtained from him, and afterwards repaid to him, 
a loan of $300 ; that amount is the only valuable thing I ever re- 
ceived from or delivered to him. 

I never owned, received, or agreed to receive any stock of the 
Credit Mobilier or of the Union Pacific Railroad, nor any divi- 
dends or profits arising from either of them. 

By the Chairman : 

Question. Had this loan you speak of any connection in any 
way with your conversation in regard to the Credit Mobilier §tock ? 
Answer. No connection in any way except in regard to the time 
of payment. Mr. Ames stated to me that if I concluded to sub- 
scribe for the Credit Mobilier stock, I could allow the loan to re- 



CREDIT MOBILIER — TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 365 

main until the payment on that was adjusted. I never regarded 
it as connected in any other way with the stock enterprise. 

Q. Do you remember the time of that transaction ? A. I do 
not remember it precisely. I should think it was in the session of 
1868. I had been to Europe the fall before and was in debt, and 
borrowed several sums of money at different times and from dif- 
ferent persons. This loan from Mr. Ames was not at his instance. 
I made the request myself. I think I had asked one or two per- 
sons before him for the loan. 

Q. Have you any knowledge in reference to any dealings of 
Mr. Ames with any gentlemen in Congress in reference to the 
stock of the Credit Mobilier ? A. No, sir ; I have not. I had 
no knowledge that Mr. Ames had ever talked with anybody but 
myself. It was a subject I gave but little attention to ; in fact, 
many of the details had almost passed out of my mind until they 
were called up in the late campaign. 

By Mr. Black: 

Q. Did you say you refused to take the stock simply because 
there was a lawsuit about it ? A. No; not exactly that. I do 
not remember any other reason which I gave to Mr. Ames than 
that I did not wish to take stock in anything that would involve 
controversy. I think I gave him no other reason than that. 

Q. When you ascertained the relation that this company had 
with the Union Pacific Eailroad Company, and whence its profits 
were to be derived, would you have considered that a sufficient 
reason for declining it irrespective of other considerations ? A. It 
would have been as the case was afterwards stated. 

Q. At the time you talked with Mr. Ames, before you rejected 
the proposition, you did not know whence the profits of the com- 
pany were to be derived ? A. I did not. I do not know that 
Mr. Ames withheld, intentionally, from me any information. I 
had derived my original knowledge of the organization of the 
company from Mr. Train. He made quite an elaborate statement 
of its purposes, and I proceeded in subsequent conversations upon 
the supposition that the organization was unchanged. I ought to 
say for myself, as well as for Mr. Ames, that he never said any 



366 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

word to me that indicated the least desire to influence my legis- 
lative action in any way. If he had any such purpose, he cer- 
tainly never said anything to me which would indicate it. 

Q. You know now, and have known for a long time, that Mr. 
Ames was deeply interested in the legislation on this subject ? 
A. I supposed that he was largely interested in the Union Pacific 
Railroad. I have heard various statements to that effect. I can- 
not say I had any such information of my own knowledge. 

Q. You mean that he did not electioneer with you or solicit 
your vote ? A. Certainly not. None of the conversations I ever 
had with him had any reference to such legislation. 

By Mr. Merrick : 

Q. Have you any knowledge of any other member of Congress 
being concerned in the Credit Mobilier stock ? A. No, sir ; I 
have not. 

Q. Or any stock in the Union Pacific Railroad ? A. I have 
not. I can say to the committee that I never saw, I believe, in my 
life, a certificate of stock of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, 
and I never saw any certificate of stock of the Credit Mobilier, 
until Mr. Brooks exhibited one, a few days ago, in the House of 
Representatives. 

Q. Were any dividends ever tendered to you on the stock of 
the Credit Mobilier upon the supposition that you were to be a 
subscriber ? A. No, sir. 

Q. This loan of $300 you have repaid, if I understand you 
correctly ? A. Yes, sir. 

By Mr. McCrary : 

Q. You never examined the charter of the Credit Mobilier to 
see what were its objects ? A. No, sir ; I never saw it. 

Q. If I understood you, you did not know that the Credit Mo* 
bilier had any connection with the Union Pacific Railroad Com- 
pany ? A. I understood from the statement of Mr. Train that its 
objects were connected with the lands of the Union Pacific Rail- 
road Company and the development and settlements along that 
road ; but that it had any relation to the Union Pacific Railroad, 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 367 

other than that, I did not know. I think I did hear also that 
tlie company was investing some of its earnings in the bonds of 
the road. 

Q. He stated it was for the purpose of purchasing land and 
building houses ? A. That was the statement of Mr. Train. I 
think he said in that connection that he had already been doing 
something of that kind at Omaha, or was going to do it. 

Q. You did not know that the object was to build the Union 
Pacific Railroad ? A. No, sir ; I did not. 

This is the case as I understand it, and as I have 
always understood it. In reviewing it, after all that has 
been said and written during the past winter, there are 
no substantial changes which I could now make, except 
to render a few points more definite. Few men can be 
certain that they give with absolute correctness the de- 
tails of conversations and transactions after a lapse of 
five years. Subject to this limitation I have no doubt 
of the accuracy of my remembrance concerning this 
transaction. 

From this testimony it will be seen that when Mr. 
Ames offered to sell me the stock in 1867-68, my only 
knowledge of the character and objects of the Credit Mo- 
bilier Company was obtained from Mr. Train, at least as 
early as the winter of 1866-67, long before the company 
had become a party to the construction contract. It has 
been said that I am mistaken in thinking it was the 
Credit Mobilier that Mr. Train offered me in 1866-67. 
I think I am not. Mr. Durant, in explaining his con- 
nection with the Credit Mobilier Company, says (pp. 
169, 170) : 

I sent Mr. Train to Philadelphia. We wanted it (the Credit 
Mobilier) for a stock operation, but we could not agree what was 



368 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

to be done with it. Mr. Train proposed to go on an expanded 
scale, but I abandoned it. I think Mr. Train got some subscrip- 
tions ; what they were I do not know. 

It has been said that it is absurd to suppose that in- 
telligent men, familiar with public affairs, did not under- 
stand all about the relation of the Credit Mobilier Com- 
pany to the Pacific Railroad Company. It is a sufficient 
answer to say that, until the present winter, a few men 
either in or out of Congress ever understood it, and it 
was for the interest of those in the management of that 
arrangement to prevent these facts from being known. 
This will appear from the testimony of the Hon. J. F. 
Wilson, who purchased ten shares of the stock in 1868. 
In the spring of 1869 he was called upon professionally 
to give an opinion as to the right of holders of Pacific 
Railroad stock to vote their own shares, notwithstand- 
ing the proxy they had given to the seven trustees. 
To enable him to understand the case, a copy of the 
triple contract was placed in his hands. He says 
(page 213) : 

Down to the time these papers were placed in my hands, I 
knew almost nothing of the organization and details of the Credit 
Mobilier, or the value of its stock, but then saw that here was 
abundant ground for future trouble and litigation, and, as one of 
the results, sold out my interest. 

And again (p. 216) : 

Q. Do you, or did you know, at the time you had this nego- 
tiation with Mr. Ames, the value of the Credit Mobilier stock ? 
A. I did not ; and I wish to state here, in regard to that, that it 
was a very ditficulc thing to ascertain what was the value of the 
stock. Tiiose who, as I say in my statement, possessed the secrets 



1 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATIOX. 369 

of the Credit Mobilier, kept them to themselves ; and I never 
was able to get any definite information as to what the value of 
the stock was. 

When, in the winter of 1867-68, Mr. Ames proposed 
to sell me some of the stock, I regarded it as a mere repe- 
tition of the offer made by Mr. Train more than a year 
before. The company was the same, and the amount 
offered me was the same. Mr. Ames knew it had for- 
merly been offered me, for I had then asked him his 
opinion of such an investment; and having understood 
the objects of the company, as stated by Mr. Train, I did 
not inquire further on that point. 

There could not be the slightest impropriety in taking 
the stock, had the objects of the company been such jis 
Mr. Train represented them to me. The only question 
on which I then hesitated was that of the personal pe- 
cuniary liability attaching to a subscription ; and, to- 
settle that question, I asked to see the charter, and the 
conditions on which the stock we're based. I have no< 
doubt Mr. Aqjes expected I would subscribe. But more 
than a year passed without further discussion of the sub- 
ject. The papers were not brought, and the purchase 
never was made. 

In the winter of 1869-70, I received the first intima- 
tion I ever had of the real nature of the connection be- 
tween the Credit Mobilier Company and the Pacific Rail- 
road Company, in a private conversation with the Hon. J. 
S. Black, of Pennsylvania. Finding in the course of that 
conversation that he was familiar with the history of the 
enterprise, I told him all I knew about the matter, and 
informed him of the offer that had been made me. He 

24 



370 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

expressed the opinion that the managers of the Credit 
Mobilier were attempting to defraud the Pacific Railroad 
Company, and informed me that Mr. Ames was pretend- 
ing to have sold stock to members of Congress, for the 
purpose of influencing their action in any legislation that 
might arise on the subject. 

Though I had neither done nor said anything which 
placed me under any obligation to take the stock, I at 
once informed Mr. Ames that if he was still holding the 
offer open to me he need do so no longer, for I would not 
take the stock. This I did immediately after the con- 
versation with Judge Black, which according to his own 
recollection as well as mine, was early in the winter of 
1869-70. 

One circumstance has given rise to a painful conflict 
of testimony between Mr. Ames and myself. I refer to 
the loan of $300. Among the various criticisms that 
have been made on this subject, it is said to be a suspi- 
cious circumstance that I should have borrowed so small 
a sum of money from Mr. Ames about this time. As 
stated in my testimony, I had just returned from Europe, 
only a few days before the session began, and the ex- 
penses of the trip had brought me short of funds. I 
might have alluded in the same connection to the fact, 
that before going abroad I had obtained money from a 
banker in New York, turning over to him advanced drafts 
for several months of my Congressional salary when it 
should be due. And needing a small sum, early in the 
session, for current expenses, I asked it of Mr. Ames, for 
the reason that he had volunteered to put me in the way 
of making what he thought would be a profitable invest- 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 371 

merit. He gave me th6 money, asking for no receipt, but 
saying at the time that if I concluded to take the stock 
we would settle both matters together. I am not able to 
fix the exact date of the loan, but it was probably in 
January, 1868. 

Mr. Ames seemed to have forgotten this circum- 
stance until I mentioned it to him after the investigation 
began ; for he said in his first testimony (p. 28) that he 
had forgotten tliat he had let me have any money. I 
neglected to pay him this money until after the conver- 
sation with Judge Black, partly because of my pecu- 
niary embarrassments, and partly because no conclusion 
had been reached in regard to the purchase of the stock. 
When I repaid him I took no receipt, as I had given none 
at the first. 

Mr. Ames said once or twice, in the course of his 
testimony, that I did not repay it, although he says in 
regard to it, on page 358, that he does not know and 
cannot remember. 

ADDITIONAL TESTIMONY. 

On these differences of recollection between Mr. 
Ames and myself, it is not so important to show that 
my statement is the correct one, as to show that I have 
made it strictly in accordance with my understanding of 
the facts. And this I am able to show by proof entirely 
independent of my own testimony. 

In the spring of 1868, the Hon. J. P. Robison, of 
Cleveland, Ohio, was my guest here in Washington, and 
spent nearly two weeks with me during the trial of the 
impeachment of Andrew Johnson. There has existed 



372 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

between us an intimate acquaintance of long standing, 
and I have often consulted him on business affairs. On 
meeting him since the adjournment of Congress, he in- 
forms me that while he was visiting me on the occasion 
referred to, I stated to him the offer of Mr. Ames, and 
asked him his opinion of it. The following letter, just 
received from him, states the conversation as he remem- 
bers it : 

Cleveland, Ohio, May 1, 1873. 

Dear General : — I send you the facts concerning a conversa- 
tion which I had with you (I think in the spring of 1868). when 
I was stopping in Washington for some days, as your guest, during 
the trial of the impeachment of President Johnson. While there, 
you told me that Mr. Ames had offered you a chance to invest a 
small amount in a company that was to opepte in lands and 
buildings along the Pacific Railroad, which he (Ames) said would 
be a good thing. You asked me what I thought of it as a busi- 
ness proposition; that you had not determined what you would do 
about it, and suggested to me to talk with Ames, and form my 
own judgnaent; and if I thought well enough of it to advance the 
money and buy the stock on joint account with you, and let you 
pay me interest on the one-half, I could do so. But I did not 
think well of the proposition as a business enterprise, and did not 
talk with Mr. Ames on the subject. 

After this talk, having at first told you I would give the sub- 
ject thought, and perhaps talk with Ames, I told you one evening 
that I did not think well of the proposition, and had not spoken 
to Ames on the subject. Yours, truly, 

J. P. EOBISON. 

Hon. J. A. Garfield. 

I subjoin two other letters, which were written about 
the time the report of the committee was made, and to 
which I refer in my remarks made on the 3d of March 
in the House of Representatives. The first is from a 



1 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 373 

citizen of the town where I reside ; and the time of the 
conversation to which it alludes was, as near as I can 
remember, in the fall of 1868, during the recess of Con- 
gress : 

Hiram, Ohio, February 18, 1873. 

Dear Sir : — It may be relevant to the question at issue be- 
tween yourself and Mr. Oukes Ames, in the Credit MobiUer inves- 
tigation, for me to state that three or four years ago, in a private 
conversation, you made a statement to me involving the substance 
of your testimony before the Poland Committee, as publislied in 
the newspapers. The material points of your statement were 
these : 

Thiat you had been spoken to by George Francis Train, who 
offered you some shares of the Credit Mobilier stock ; tliat you 
told him that you had no money to invest in stocks ; that subse- 
quently you had a conversation in relation to the matter with Mr. 
Ames ; that Ames offered to carry the stock for you until you 
could pay for it, if you cared to buy it ; and that you had told 
him in that case perhaps you would take it, but would not agree 
to do so until you had inquired more fully into the matter. Such 
an arrangement as this was made, Ames agreeing to carry the 
stock until you should decide. In this way the matter stood, as I 
understood it, at the time of our conversation. My understand- 
ing was distinct that you had not accepted Mr. Ames's proposi- 
tion, but that the shares were still held at your option. 

You stated further, that the company was to operate in real 
property along the line of the Pacific road. Perhaps I should add 
that this conversation, which I have always remembered very dis- 
tinctly, took place here in Hiram. I have remembered the con- 
versation the more distinctly from the circumstances that gave rise 
to it. Having been intimately acquainted with you for twelve or 
fifteen years, and having had a considerable knowledge of your 
pecuniary affairs. I asked you how you were getting on, and 
especially whether you were managing to reduce your debts. In 
reply you gave me a detailed statement of your affairs, and con- 
cluded by saying you had had some stock offered you, which, if 



374 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

you bought it, would probably make you some money. You then 
proceeded to state the case, as I have stated it above. 

I cannot fix the time of this conversation more definitely than 
to say it was certainly three, and probably four, years ago. 
Very truly, yours, 

B. A. Hinsdale, 

President of Hiram College. 
Hon, J. A. Garfield, 

Washington, D. G. 

The other letter was addressed to the Speaker of the 
House, and is as follows : 

Philadelphia, February 15, 1873. 

My Dear Sir : — From the beginning of the investigation con- 
cerning Mr. Ames's use of the Credit Mobilier, I believed that 
General Garfield was free from all guilty connection with that 
business. This opinion was founded not merely on my confidence 
in his integrity, but on some special knowledge of his case. I 
may have told you all about it in conversation, but I desire now 
to repeat it by way of reminder. 

I assert unhesitatingly that, whatever General Garfield may 
have done or forborne to do, he acted in profound ignorance of 
the nature and character of the thing which Mr. Ames was pro- 
posing to sell. He had not the slightest suspicion that he was to 
be taken into a ring organized for the purpose of defrauding the 
public ; nor did he know that the stock was in any manner con- 
nected with anything which came, or could come, with the legis- 
lative jurisdiction of Congress. The case against him lacks the 
scienter which alone constitutes guilt. 

In the winter of 18G9-'70, I told General Garfield of the fact 
that his name was on Ames's list ; that Ames charged him with 
being one of his distributees ; explained to him the character, 
origin, and objects of the Credit Mobilier ; pointed out the con- 
nection it had with Congressional legislation, and showed him how 
impossible it was for a member of Congress to hold stock in it 
without bringing his private interests in conflict with his public 
duty. That all this was to him a perfectly new revelation I am 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 375 

as sure as I can be of such a fact, or of any fact which is capable 
of being proved only by moral circumstances. He told me, then, 
the whole story of Train's offer to him and Ames's subsequent so- 
licitation, and his own action in the premises, much as he details 
it to the committee. I do not undertake to reproduce the conver- 
sation, but the effect of it all was to convince me thoroughly that 
when he listened to Ames he was perfectly unconscious of any- 
thing evil. I watched carefully every word that fell from him on 
this point, and did not regard his narrative of the transaction in 
other respects with much interest, because in my view everything 
else was insignificant. I did not care whether he had made a bar- 
gain technically binding or not ; his integrity depended upon the 
question whether he acted with his eyes open. If he had known 
the true character of the proposition made to him he would not 
have endured it, much less embraced it. 

Now, couple this with Mr. Ames's admission that he gave no 
explanation whatever of the matter to General Garfield ; then re- 
flect that not a particle of proof exists to show that he learned 
anything about it previous to his conversation with me, and I 
think you will say that it is altogether unjust to put him on the 
list of those who, knowingly and wilfully, joined the fraudulent 
association in question. 

J. S. Black. 
Hon. J. G. Blaine, 

Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

To these may be added the fact, recently published 
by Colonel Donn Piatt, of this city, that in the winter of 
1869-70 he had occasion to look into the history of the 
Credit Mobilier Company, and found the same state of 
facts concerning my connection with it as are set forth in 
the letters quoted above. 

Whether my understanding of the facts is correct or 
not, it is manifest from the testimony given above that in 
the spring of 1868, and in the autumn of that year, and 
again in the winter of 1869, when I could have no motive 



376 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

to misrepresent the facts, I stated the case to these gen- 
tlemen, substantially as it is stated in my testimony be- 
fore the committee. 

RESPONSE TO THE CHARGE IN SEPTEMBER, 1872. 

But it has been charged in the newspapers that dur- 
ing the Presidential campaign, I denied any knowledge 
of the subject, or at least that I allowed the impression 
to be made upon the public mind that I knew nothing of 
it. To this I answer, I wrote no letter on the subject and 
made no statement in any public address, except to deny 
in the broadest terms, the only charge then made, that I 
had been bribed by Oakes Ames. 

When the charges first appeared in the newspapers, 
I was in Montana Territory, and heard nothing of them 
until my return on the 13th or 14th of September. On 
the following day I met General Boynton, correspon- 
dent of the Cincinnati Gazette, and related to him briefly 
what I remembered about the offer to sell the stock. I 
told hiui I should write no letter on the subject, but if 
he thought best to publish the substance of what I had 
stated to him he could do so. The same day he wrote 
and telegraphed from Washington to the Cincinnati Ga- 
zettcy under date of September 15, 1872, the following, 
which is a brief but correct report of my statement to 
him : 

General Garfield, who has just arrived here from the Indian 
country, has to-day had the first opportunity of seeing the charges 
connecting his name with receiving shares of the Credit Mobilier 
from Oakes Ames. He authorizes the statement that he never 
subscribed for a single share of the stock, and that he never re- 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 377 

ceived or saw a share of it. "When the company was first formed, 
Georo-e Francis Train, then active in it, came to Washington and 
exhibited a list of subscribers, of leading capitalists and some 
members of Congress, to the stock of the company. The sub- 
scription was described as a popular one of $1,000 cash. Train 
urged General Garfield to subscribe on two occasions, and each 
time he declined. Subsequently he was again informed that the 
list was nearly completed, but that a chance remained for him to 
subscribe, when he again declined, and to this day has not sub- 
scribed for or received any share of stock or bond of the company. 

This dispatch was widely copied in the newspapers at 
the time, and was the only statement I made or author- 
ized. One thing in connection with the case I withheld 
from the public. When I saw the letters of Oakes Ames 
to Mr. ^NlcCoinb, I was convinced, from what Judge Black 
had told me in 1869, that they were genuine, and that 
Ames had pretended to McComb that he had sold the 
Credit Mobilier stock for the purpose of securing the 
influence of members of Congress in any legislation that 
might arise touching his interests. I might have pub- 
lished the fact that I had heard this, and now believed 
Ames had so represented it ; though at the time Judge 
Black gave me the information I thought quite likely he 
was mistaken. I did not know to what extent any other 
member of Congress had had negotiations with Mr. Ames ; 
but knowing the members whose names were published 
in connection with the charges, and believing them to be 
men of the highest integrity, I did not think it just either 
to them or to the party with which we acted, to express 
my opinion of the genuineness of Ames's letters at a time 
when a false construction would doubtless have been 
placed upon it. 



378 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Here I might rest the case, but for some of the testi- 
mony given by Mr. Ames in reference to myself. I shall 
consider it carefully, and shall make quotations of his 
language, or refer to it by pages as printed in the report, 
so that the correctness of my citations may, in every 
case, be verified 

POINTS OF AGREEMENT AND DIFFERENCE BE- 
TWEEN MR. AMES AND MYSELF. 

To bring the discussion into as narrow a compass as 
possible, the points of agreement and difference between 
Mr. Ames and myself may thus be stated : 

We agree that, soon after the beginning of the session 
of 1867-68, Mr. Ames offered to sell me ten shares of 
the Credit Mobilier stock, at par and the accrued in- 
terest ; that I never paid him any money on that offer ; 
that I never received a certificate of stock ; that after 
the month of June, 1868, I never received, demanded, or 
was offered any dividend, in any form, on that stock. 
We also agree that I once received from Mr. Ames a 
small sum of money. On the following points we dis- 
agree : He claims that I agreed to take the stock. I 
deny it. He claims that I received from him $329, 
and no more, as a balance of dividends on the stock. 
This I deny ; and assert that I borrowed from him $300, 
and no more, and afterwards returned it; and that 
I never received anything from him on account of the 
stock. 

In discussing the testimony relating to myself, it be- 
comes necessary, for a full exhibition of the argument, to 
refer to that concerning others. 



i 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 379 

MR. AMES'S FIRST TESTIMONY. 

It has been said that in Mr. Ames's first testi- 
mony, he withheld or concealed the facts generally ; and 
hence, that what he said at that time concerning any 
one person is of but little consequence. The weight 
and value of his first testimony concerning any one 
person can be ascertained only by comparing it with 
his testimony given at the same examination concerning 
others. 

In that first examination of December 17, as recorded 
on pp. 15-58, Mr. Ames mentions by name (pp. 19-21) 
sixteen members of Congress who were said to have had 
dealings with him in reference to Credit Mobilier stock. 
Eleven of these, he says in that testimony, bought the 
stock ; but he there sets me down among the five who did 
not buy it. He says (p. 21), " He [Garfield] did not 
pay for it or receive it." 

He was, at the same time, cross-examined in regard 
to the dividends he paid to different persons ; and he 
testified (pp. 23^1) that he paid one or more dividends 
to eight different members of Congress, and that three 
others, being original subscribers, drew their dividends, 
not from him, but directly from the company. To sev- 
eral of the eight he says he paid all the dividends that 
accrued. 

But in the same cross-examination he testified that 
he did not remember to have paid me any dividends, nor 
that he had let me have any money. The following 
is the whole of his testimony concerning me, on cross- 
examination : 



380 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Q. In reference to Mr. Garfield, you say that you agreed to 
get ten shares for him and to hold them till he could pay for them, 
and that he never did pay for them nor receive them ? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. He never paid any money on that stock nor received any 
money from it ? A. iSTot on account of it. 

Q. He received no dividends ? A. No, sir ; I think not. He 
says he did not. My own recollection is not very clear. 

Q. So that, as you understand, Mr. Garfield never parted with 
any money, nor received any money on that transaction ? A. No, 
sir ; he had some money from me once, some three or four hun- 
dred dollars, and called it a loan. He says that is all he ever re- 
ceived from me, and that he considered it a loan. He never took 
his stock, and never paid for it. 

Q. Did you understand it so ? A. Yes ; I am willing to so 
understand it. I do not recollect paying him any dividend, and 
have forgotten that I paid him any money. — (P. 28). 

******* 

Q. Who received the dividends ? A. Mr. Patterson, Mr. 
Bingham, James F. Wilson did, and I think Mr. Colfax received. 
a part of them. I do not know whether he received them all or 
not. I think Mr. Scofield received a part of them. Messrs. Kel- 
ley and Garfield never paid for their stock, and nijver received 
their dividends. — (P. 40). 

Certainly, it cannot be said that Mr. Ames has evinced 
any partiality for me ; and if he was attempting to shield 
any of those concerned, it will not be claimed that I was 
one of his favorites. 

In his first testimony, he claims to have spoken from 
memory, and without the aid of his documents. But 
he did then distinctly testify that he sold the stock to 
eleven members, and paid dividends to eight of them. 
He not only did not put me in either of those lists, but 
distinctly testified that I never took the stock nor re- 
ceived the dividends arising from it. 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT YINmCATION. 381 



MR. AMES'S SUBSEQUENT TESTIMONY. 
His second testimony was given on the 22d January, 
five weeks after his first. In assigning to this and all 
his subsequent testimony its just weight, it ought to be 
said that before he gave it, an event occurred which 
made it strongly for his interest to prove a sale of the 
stock which he held as trustee. Besides the fact that 
McComb had already an equity suit pending in Phila- 
delphia, to compel Mr. Ames to account to him for this 
same stock, another suit was threatened, after he had 
given his first testimony, to make him account to the 
company for all the stock he had not sold as trustee. 
His first testimony was given on the 17th December, 
and was made public on the 6th of January. On the 
15th of January, T. C Durant, one of the heaviest stock- 
holders of the Credit Mobilier Company, and for a long 
time its president, was examined as a witness, and said, 
(p. 173) : ''The stock that stands in the name of Mr. 
Ames, as trustee, I claim belongs to the company yet ; 
and I have a summons in suit in my pocket waiting 
to catch him in New York to serve the papers." Of 
course, if as a trustee he had made sale of any por- 
tion of this stock, and afterward as an individual had 
bought it back, he could not be compelled to return it 
to the company. 

Nowhere in Mr. Ames's subsequent testimony does he 
claim to remember the transaction between himself and 
me any differently from what he first stated it to be. 
But from the memoranda found or made after his first 
examination, he infers and declares that there was a sale 



382 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

of the stock to me, and a payment to me of $329 oti 
account of dividends. 

Here, again, his testimony concerning me should be 
compared with his testimony given at the same time con- 
cerning others. 

The memoranda out of which his additional testimony 
grew, consisting of certificates of stock, receipts, checks 
on the Sergeant-at-Arms, and entries in his diary. I 
will consider these in the order stated. 

To two members of Congress he delivered certificates 
of Credit Mobilier stock, which as trustee he had sold to 
them (see pp. 267 and 290) ; and in a third case he 
delivered a certificate of stock to the person to whom a 
member had sold it. But Mr. Ames testified that he 
never gave me a certificate of stock; that I never de- 
manded one ; and that no certificate was ever spoken of 
between us. (See pp. 295, 296.) 

In the case of five members, he gave to them, or 
received from them, regular receipts of payment on ac- 
count of stock and dividends. (See pp. 21, 113, 191, 
204, 337, 456, and 458.) But nowhere is it claimed or 
pretended that any receipt was ever given by me, or to 
me, on account of this stock, or on account of any divi- 
dends arising from it. 

Again, to five of the members, Mr. Ames gave checks 
on the Sergeant-at-Arms, payable to them by name ; 
and these checks were produced in evidence. (See pp. 
333, 334, and 449.) In the case of three others, he 
produced checks bearing on their face the initials of the 
persons to whom he claimed they were paid. But he 
nowhere pretended to have or ever to have had any check 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRroMPHANT VINDICATION. 383 

bearing either my name or my initials, or any mark or 
indorsement connecting it with me. 

In regard to dividends claimed in his subsequent tes- 
timony to have been paid to different members, in two 
cases he says he paid all the dividends that accrued on 
the stock from December, 1867, to May 6, 1871. (See 
pp. 191 and 337.) In a third case, all the accretions 
of the stock were received by the person to whom he 
sold it, as the result of a resale. (See p. 217.) In a 
fourth case he claims to have paid money on the 22d 
September, 1868, on account of dividends (see p. 461) ; 
and in a fifth case he claims to have paid a dividend 
in full, January 22, 1869. (See p. 454.) One pur- 
chaser sold his ten shares in the winter of 1868-69, and 
received thereon a net profit of at least $3,000. Yet 
Mr. Ames repeatedly swears that he never paid me 
but $329 ; that after June, 1868, he never tendered to 
me nor did I ever demand from him any dividend ; and 
that there was never any conversation between us relat- 
ing to dividends. (See pp. 40, 296, and 356.) 

As an example of his testimony on this point, I 
quote from page 296. After Mr. Ames had stated that 
he remembered no conversation between us in regard 
to the adjustment of these accounts, the committee 
asked : 

Q. Was this the only dealing you had with him in reference 
to any stock ? A. I think so. 

Q. Was it the only transaction of any kind ? A. The only 
transaction. 

Q. Has that $329 ever been paid to you ? A I have no recol- 
lection of it. 

Q. Have you any belief that it ever has ? A. No, sir. 



384 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Q. Did you ever loan General Garfield 1300 ? A. Not to my 
knowledge : except that he calls this a loan. 

Q. There were dividends of Union Pacific Railroad stock on 
these ten shares ? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. Did General Garfield ever receive these ? A. No, sir. He 
never has received but $329. . . . 

Q. Has there been any conversation between you and him 
in reference to the Pacific stock he was entitled to ? A. No, 
sir. 

Q. Has he ever called for it ? A. No, sir. 

Q. Have you ever offered it to him ? A. No, sir. 

Q. Has there been any conversation in relation to it ? A. No, 
sir. 

The assertion that he withheld the payment of divi- 
dends because of the McComb suit brought in Novem- 
ber, 1868, is wholly broken down by the fact that he 
did pay the dividend to several persons during a period 
of two years after the suit was commenced. 

The only other memoranda offered as evidence are 
the entries in Mr. Ames's diary for 1868. That book 
contains a separate statement of an account with eleven 
members of Congress, showing the number of shares of 
stock sold or intended to be sold to each, with the in- 
terest and dividends thereon. (See pp. 450 to 461.) 
Across the face of nine of these accounts, long lines are 
drawn, crossing each other, showing, as Mr. Ames says, 
that in each such case the account was adjusted and 
closed. Three of these entries of accounts are not thus 
crossed off (see pp. 451, 458, and 459,) and the three 
members referred to therein testify that they never 
bought the stock. The account entered under my name 
is one of three that are not crossed off. Here is the 
entry in full (See p. 459 :) 



CREDIT MOBILIER— TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 385 

Garfield. 

10 shares Cr6dit M $1,000 00 

7 mos, 10 days 43 36 

1,043 36 
80 per ct. bd. div., at 97 776 00 

267 36 
Int't to June 20 3 64 

271 00 

1,000 C. M. 
1,000 U. P. 

This entry is a mere undated memorandum, and indi- 
cates neither payment, settlement, or sale. In reference 
to it, the following testimony was given by Mr. Ames 
on cross-examination (see p. 460) : 

Q. This statement of Mr. Garfield's account is not crossed off, 
which indicates, does it, that the matter has never been settled or 
adjusted ? A. No, sir ; it never has. 

Q. Can you state whether you have any other entry in relation 
to Mr. Garfield ? A. No, sir. 

Comparing Mr. Ames's testimony in reference to me, 
with that in reference to others, it appears that when 
he testified from his memory alone, he distinctly and 
affirmatively excepted me from the list of those who 
bought the stock or received the dividends ; and that 
subsequently, in every case save my own, he produced 
some one or more of the following documents as evi- 
dence, viz., certificates of stock ; receipts of money or 
dividends ; checks bearing either the full names or the 
initijils of the persons to whom they purported to have 
been paid ; or entries, in his diary, of accounts marked 
25 



3<S6 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

"adjusted and closed." But no one of the classes of 
memoranda here described was produced in reference 
to me ; nor was it pretended that any one such, refer- 
ring to me ever existed. 

' In this review, I neither assert nor intimate that 
sales of stock are proved in the other cases referred to. 
In several cases such proof was not made. But I do 
assert that none of the evidences mentioned above exist 
in reference to me. 

MR. AMES'S MEMORANDA. 

Having thus stated the difference between the testi- 
mony relating to other persons, and that relating to me, 
I now notice the testimony on which it is attempted to 
reach the conclusion that I did agree to take the stock, 
and did receive $329 on account of it. 

On the 22d of January, Mr. Ames presented to the 
committee a statement of an alleged account with me, 
which I quote from page 397 : 

J. A. G. Dr. 

1868. To 10 shares stock Credit Mobiher of A $1,000 00 

Interest 47 00 

June 19. To cash 329 00 

$1,376 00 

Cr. 
1868. By dividend bonds, Union Pacific Railroad, 

$1,000, at 80 per cent , less 3 per cent . $776 00 
June 17. By dividend collected for your account 600 00 

1,376 00 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 387 

This account, and other similar ones presented at 
the same time, concerning other memhers, he claimed to 
have copied from his memorandum-hook. But when the 
memorandum-book was subsequently presented, it was 
found that the account here quoted was not copied from 
it, but was made up partly from memory and partly from 
such memoranda as Mr. -Ames had discovered after his 
first examination. 

By comparing this account with the entry made in 
his diary, and already quoted, it will be seen that they 
are not duplicates, either in substance or form ; and that 
in this account a new element is added, namely, an al- 
leged payment of $329 in cash on June 19. This is the 
very element in dispute. 

THE CHECK ON" THE SERGEANT-AT-ARMS. 

The pretended proof that this sum was paid me is 
found in the production of a check drawn by Mr. Ames 
on the Sergeant-at-Arms. The following is the language 
of the check, as reported on page 353 of the testimony ; 

June 23, 1868. 
i Pay 0. A. or bearer three hundred and twenty-nine dollars, 

fe and charge to my account. 

; Oakes Ames. 

This check bears no indorsement or other mark, 
than the words and figures given above. It was drawn 
on the 22d day of June, and, as shown by the books of 
the Sergeant-at-Arms, was paid the same day by the 
paying-teller. But if this check was paid to me on the 
account just quoted, it must have been delivered to me three 



388 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

days before it was drawn; for the account says that I 
received the payment on the 19th of June. 

There is nothing but the testimony of Mr. Ames that 
in any way connects this check with me. And, as the 
committee find that the check was paid to me, I call 
special attention to all the testimony that bears upon the 
question. 

When Mr. Ames testified that he paid me $329 as a 
dividend on account of the stock the following question 
was asked him (p. 295) : 

Q. How was that paid ? A. Paid in money, I believe. 

At a later period in the examination (p. 297) : 

Q. You say that $339 was paid to him. How was that paid ? 
A. I presume by a check on the Sergeant-at-Arms. I find there 
checks filed, without indicating who they were for. 

One week later, the check referred to above was 
produced, and the following examination was had (p. 
353): 

Q. This check seems to have been paid to somebody, and 
taken up by the Sergeant-at-Arms. Those initials are your own ? 
A. Yes, sir. 

Q. Do you know who had the benefit of this check ? A. I 
cannot tell you. 

Q. Do you think you received the money on it yourself ? A. 
I have no idea. I may have drawn the money and handed it to 
another person. It was paid in that transaction. It may have 
been paid to Mr. Garfield. There were several sums of that 
amount. 

Q. Have you any memory in reference to this check ? A. I 
have no memory as to that particular check 

Still later in the examination occurs the following 
(p. 354) : 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 389 

Q. In regard to Mr. Garfield, do you know whether you gave 
him a check, or paid him the money ? A. I think I did not pay 
him the money. He got it from the Sergeant- at- Arms. 

Still later, in the same examination, occurs the fol- 
lowing (p. 355) : 

Q. You think the check on which you wrote nothing to in- 
dicate the payee must have been Mr. Garfield's ? A. Yes, sir. 
That is my judgment. 

On the ilth of February, twelve days later still, the 
subject came up again, and Mr. Ames said (p. 471) : 

A. I am not sure how I paid Mr. Garfield. 

Still later, in a cross-examination in reference to Mr. 
Colfax, the following occurs (p 471) ; 

Q. In testifying in Mr. Garfield's case, you say you may have 
drawn the money on the check and paid him. Is not your an- 
swer equally applicable in the case of Mr. Colfax ? A. No, sir. 

Q. Why not ? A. I put Mr. Colfax's initials on the check, 
while I put no initials on Mr. Garfield's, and I may have drawn 
the money myself. 

Q. Did not Mr. Garfield's check belong to him ? A. Mr. 
Garfield had not paid for his stock. He was entitled to $329 
balance. But Mr. Colfax paid for his, and I had no business with 
his 11,200. 

Q. Is your recollection in regard to this payment to Mr. Col- 
fax any more clear than your recollection as to the payment to 
Mr. Garfield ? A. Yes, sir ; I think it is. 

And finally, in the examination of Mr. Dillon, cashier 
of the Sergeant-at-Arms, the following is recorded (p. 
479): 

Q. There is a check payable to Oakes Ames or bearer. Have 
you any recollection of that ? A. That was paid to himself. I 
have no doubt myself that I paid that to Mr. Ames. 



390 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Reviewing the testimony on this point (and I have 
quoted it all), it will be seen that Mr. Ames several 
times asserts that he does not know whether he paid me 
the check or not. He states positively that he has no 
special recollection of the check. His testimony is wholly 
inferential. In one of the seven paragraphs quoted, he 
says he paid me the money ; in another he says he may 
have paid me the money ; in three of them he thinks, or 
presumes, that he paid me the check ; and in the other 
two he says he does not know. 

The cashier of the Sergeant-at-Arms has no doubt 
that Mr. Ames himself drew the money on the check. 
And yet, upon this vague and wholly inconclusive testi- 
mony, and almost alone upon it, is based the assumption 
that I received from Mr. Ames $329, as a dividend on 
the stock. I affirm, with perfect distinction of recollec- 
tion, that I received no check from Mr. Ames. The only 
money I ever received from him was in currency. 

The only other evidence in support of the assumption 
that he paid me $329, as a balance on the stock, is found 
in the entries in his diary for 1868. The value of this 
class of memoranda depends altogether upon their charac- 
ter and upon the business habits of the man who makes 
them. On this latter point the following testimony of 
Mr. Ames, on page 34, is important : 

Q. Is it your habit, as a matter of business, in conducting va- 
rious transactions with different persons, to do it without making 
any memoranda ? A. This was my habit. Until within a year 
or two I have had no bookkeeper, and I used to keep all my own 
matters in my own way, and very carelessly, I admit. 

The memorandum-book in which these entries were 



CREDIT MOBILIER — TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 391 

made was not presented to the committee until the 11th 
of February, one week before they made their report. 
This book does not contain continuous entries of current 
transactions, with consecutive dates. It is in no sense a 
day-book, but contains a loose, irregular mass of memo- 
randa, which may have been made at the time of thei 
transactions, or long afterward. Mr. Ames says of it in 
his testimony (p. 281) : 

Q. What was the character of the book in which the memo- 
randa were made ? A. It was in a small pocket memorandum, 
and some of it on slips of paper. 

It is not pretended that this book contains a complete 
record of payments and receipts. And yet, besides the 
check already referred to, this book, so made up, contains 
the only evidence, or pretended evidence, on which it is 
claimed that I agreed to take the stock. It should be 
remembered that every portion of this evidence, both 
check and book, is of Mr. Ames's own making. I have 
already referred to the undated memorandum of an ac- 
count in this book, under my name, and have shown that 
it neither proved a sale of stock, or any payment on ac- 
count of it. 

There are but two other entries in the book relating 
to me, and they are two lists of names, substantially 
duplicates of each other, with various amounts set oppo- 
site each. They are found on pages 450 and 453 of the 
testimony. The word " paid " is marked before the first 
name on one of these lists, and ditto marks placed un- 
der the word " paid " and opposite the remaining names. 
But the value of this entry as proof of payment will be 



892 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

seen from the cross-examination of Mr. Ames, which im- 
mediately follows the list (p. 453) : 

Q. This entry, " Paid S. Colfax $1,200," is the amount which 
you paid by this check on the Sergeant-at-Arms ? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. Was this entry upon this page of these various names in- 
tended to show the amount you were to pay, or that you had 
paid ; was that made at this date ? A. I do not know ; it was 
made about that time. - 1 would not have written it on Sunday ; 
it is not very likely. It was made on a blank page. It is simply 
a list of names. 

Q. Were these names put down after you had made the pay- 
ments, or before, do you think ? A. Before, I think. 

Q. You think you made this list before the parties referred to 
had actually received their checks, or received the money ? A. 
Yes, sir ; that was to show whom I had to pay, and who were 
entitled to receive the 60 per cent, dividend. It shows whom I 
had to pay here in Washington. 

Q. It says " paid ?" A. Yes, sir ; well, I did pay it. 

Q. What I want to know is, whether the list was made out 
before or after payment ? A. About the same time, I suppose ; 
probably before. 

The other list, bearing the same names and amounts, 
shows no other evidence that the several sums were paid 
than a cross marked opposite each amount. But con- 
cerning this, Mr. Ames testifies that it was a list of what 
was to be paid, and that the cross was subsequently 
added to show that the amount had been paid. 

Neither of these lists shows anything as to the time 
or mode of payment, and would nowhere be accepted as 
proof of payment. By Mr. Ames's own showing, they are 
lists of persons to whom he expected to pay the amounts 
set opposite their names. They may exhibit his expec- 
tations, but they do not prove the alleged payments. If 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 393 

the exact sum of $329 was received by me at the time 
aiid under the circumstances alleged by Mr. Ames, it im- 
plies an agreement to take the stock. It implies, fur- 
thermore, that Mr. Ames had sold Pacific Railroad bonds 
for me ; that he had received also a cash dividend for me, 
and had accounted to me as trustee for these receipts, 
and the balance of the proceeds. 

Now, I affirm, with the firmest conviction of the cor- 
rectness of my statement, that I never heard until this 
investigation began, that Mr. Ames ever sold any bonds, 
or performed any other stock transactions on my behalf; 
and no act of mine was ever based on such a su2)position. 



INTERVIEWS WITH MR. AMES DURING THE INVES- 
TIGATION. 

The only remaining testimony bearing upon me, is that 
in which Mr. Ames refers to conversations between him- 
self and me, after the investigation began. The first of 
these was of his own seeking, and occurred before he or I 
had testified. Soon after the investigation began, Mr. 
Ames asked me what I remembered of our talk in 1867- 
'68 in reference to the Credit Mobilier Company. I told 
him I could best answer his question by reading to him 
the statement I had already prepared to lay before the 
committee when I should be called. Accordingly, on the 
following day, I took my written statement to the Capi- 
tol, and read it to him carefully, sentence by sentence, 
and asked him to point out anything which he might 
think incorrect. He made but two criticisms ; one in re- 
gard to a date, and the other, that he thought it was tbe 



394 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Credit Foncier and not the Cr;^'dit Mobilier that Mr. Train 
asked me to subscribe to in 1866-67. When I read the 
panigraph in which I stated that I had once borrowed 
$300 of him, he remarked, " I believe I did let you have 
some money, but I had forgotten it." He said nothing to 
indicate that he regarded me as having purchased the 
stock ; and from that conversation I did not doubt that 
he regarded my statement substantially correct. His 
first testimony, given a few days afterward, confirmed 
me in this opinion. 

I had another interview with Mr. Ames, of my own 
seeking, to which he alludes on pages 357 and 359; and 
for a full understanding of it, a statement of some pre- 
vious facts is necessary. I gave my testimony before the 
committee, and in Mr. Ames's hearing, on the morning of 
January 14. It consisted of the statement I had already 
read to Mr. Ames, and of the cross-examination which 
followed my reading of the statement, all of which has 
been quoted above. 

During that afternoon, while I was engaged in the 
management of an appropriation bill in the House, word 
was brought to me that Mr. Ames, on coming out of the 
committee-room, had declared in the hearing of several 
reporters that " Garfield was in league with Judge Black 
to break him down ; that it was $400, not $300, that he 
had let Gartield have, who had not only never repaid it, 
but had refused to repay it." Though this report of Mr. 
Ames's alleged declaration was subsequently found to be 
false, and was doubtless fabricated for the purpose of 
creating difficulty, yet there were circumstances which, 
at the time, led me to suppose that the report was correct. 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 395 

One was that Judge Black (who was McComb's counsel 
in the suit against Ames) was present at my examination, 
and had drawn out on cross-examination my opinion of 
the nature of Mr. Ames's relation to the Credit Mobilier 
Company and the Union Pacific Company ; and the other 
was, that in Mr. Ames's testimony of December 17, he 
had said (p. 28), " He [Mr. Garfield] had some money 
from me once, some three or four hundred dollars, and 
called it a loan." The sum of four hundred dollars had 
thus been mentioned in his testimony, and it gave plausi- 
bility to the story that he was now claiming that as the 
amount he had loaned me. 

Supposing that Mr. Ames had said w^hat was report- 
ed, I was deeply indignant ; and, with a view of drawing 
from him a denial or retraction of the statement, or, if he 
persisted in it, to pay him twice over, so that he could no 
longer say or pretend that there existed between us any 
unsettled transaction, I drew some money from the office 
of Sergeant-at-Arms, and, going to my committee-room, 
addressed him the following note : 

House op Representatives, 

January 14, 1873. 

Sir : — I have just been informed, to my utter amazement, that 
after coming out of the committee-room this morning, you said, in 
the presence of several reporters, that you had loaned me four in- 
stead of three hundred dollars, and that I had not only refused to 
pay you, but was aiding your accusers to injure you in the inves- 
tigation. I shall call the attention of the committee to it, unless 
I find I am misinformed. To bring the loan question to an im- 
mediate issue between us, I inclose herewith $400. If you wish 
to do justice to the truth and to me, you will return it and cor- 
rect the alleged statement if you made it. If not, you will keep 



396 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the money and thus be paid twice and more. Silence on youi 
part will be a confession that you have deeply wronged me. 

J. A. Garfield. 
Hon. Oakes Ames. 

After the House had adjourned for the day, I found, 
on returning to my committee-room, that I had omitted to 
inclose the note with the money, which had been sent to 
the House post-office. I immediately sought Mr. Ames 
to deliver the note, but failed to find him at his hotel or 
elsewhere that evening. Early the next morning, Janu- 
ary 15, I found him, and delivered the note. He denied 
having said or claimed any of the things therein set forth, 
and wrote on the back of my letter the following : 

Washington, January 15, 1873. 
Dear Sir : — I return you your letter with inclosures, and I ut- 
terly deny ever having said that you refused to pay me, or that it 
was" four instead of three hundred dollars, or that you was aiding 
mv accusers. I also wish to say that there has never been any but 
the most friendly feelings between us, and no transaction in the 
least degree that can be censured by any fair-minded person. I 
herewith return you the four hundred dollars as not belonging to 
me. Yours, truly, 

Oakes Ames. 
Hon. J. A. Garfield. 

From inquiry of the reporters to whom the remarks 
were alleged to have I een made, I had become satisfied 
that the story was wholly false, and when Mr. Ames add- 
ed his denial, I expressed to him my regret that I had 
written this note in anger and upon false information. I 
furthermore said to Mr. Ames that, if he had any doubt 
in reference to the repayment of the loan, I wished him 
to keep the money. He refused to keep any part of it, 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 397 

and his conversation indicated that he regarded all trans- 
actions between us settled. 

Before I left his room, however, he said he had some 
memoranda which seemed to indicate that the money I 
had of him was on account of stock ; and asked me if he 
did not, some time in 1868, deliver to me a statement to 
that effect. I told him if he had any account of that sort, 
I was neither aware of it, nor responsible for it; and 
thereupon I made substantially the following statement: 

Mr. Ames, the only memorandum you ever showed me was in 
1867-68, when speaking to me of this proposed sale of stock, you 
figured out on a little piece of paper, what you supposed would be 
realized from an investment of $1,000 ; and, as I remember, you 
wrote down these figures ; 

1,000 

1,000 
400 

2,400 
as the amounts you expected to realize. 

While saying this to Mr. Ames, I wrote the figures 
as above, on a piece of paper lying on his table, to show 
him what the only statement was he had made to me. 
It is totally false that these figures had any other mean- 
ing than that I have here given ; nor did I say anything 
out of which could be fabricated such a statement as ap- 
pears on pages 358, 359. 

In his testimony of January 29, Mr. Ames gives a 
most remarkable account of this interview. Remember- 
ing the fact, by him undisputed, that there had been no 
communication between us on this subject for more than 
four years before this investigation began, notice the fol- 
lowing (p. 358) : 



398 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Q. Did you have any conversation in reference to the influence 
this transaction would have on the election last fall ? A. Yes, he 
said it would be very injurious to him. 

Q. What else in reference to that ? A. I am a very bad man 
to repeat conversations ; I cannot remember. 

That is, he makes me, on the 15th of January, 1873, 
express the fear that this transaction will injure me in 
the election of October, 1872! 

Again, pages 357, 358 : 

Q. You may state whether in conversation with you, Mr. Gar- 
field claims, as he claims before us, that the only transaction be- 
tween you was borrowing $300. A. No, sir, he did not claim that 
with me. 

Q. . State how he did claim it with you ; what was said ? A. I 
cannot remember half of it. . . . He [Mr. Garfield] stated that 
when he came back from Europe, being in want of funds, he 
called on me to loan him a sum of money. He thought he had 
repaid it. I do not know ; I do not remember. . . . 

Q. How long after that transaction [the offer to sell Credit 
Mobilier stock] did he go to Europe ? A. 1 believe it was a year 
or two. . . . 

Q. Do you not know that he did not go to Europe for nearly 
two years afterward ? A. No, I do not. It is my impression it 
was two years afterward, but I cannot remember dates. 

I should think not, if this testimony is an example 
of his memory ! 

It is known to thousands of people that I went to 
Europe in the summer of 1867, and at no other time. I 
sailed from New York on the 13th of July, 1867, spent 
several days of August in Scotland, with Speaker Blaine 
and Senator Morrill, of Vermont, and returned to New 
York on the 9th of the following November — three weeks 
before the beginning of the session of Congress. 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 399 

The books of the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House show 
that, before going, I had assigned several months' pay in 
advance to a banker, who had advanced me money for 
the expenses of the trip. To break the weight of this 
fact, which showed why I came to need a small loan, Mr. 
Ames says I did not go to Europe till nearly two years 
afterward. 

If a reason be sought why he gave such testimony it 
may perhaps be found on the same page from which the 
last quotation is made (page 359) : 

Q. How did you happen to retain that little stray memoran- 
dum ? A. I do not know. I found it in my table two or three 
days afterward. I did not pay any attention to it at the time, 
until I found there was to be a conflict of testimony, and I thought 
that might be something worth preserving. 

How did he find out after that time that " there was 
to be a conflict of testimony ?" The figures were made 
on that piece of paper January 15, the day after I had 
given my testimony, and four weeks after he had given 
his first testimony. There was no conflict except what 
he himself made ; and that conflict was as marked be- 
tween his first statement and his subsequent ones, as be- 
tween the latter and mine. 

There runs through all this testimony now under con- 
sideration an intimation that I was in a state of alarm, 
was beseeching Mr. Ames " to let me oflE* easily," " to 
say as little about it as possible," " to let it go as a 
loan," " to save my reputation," that I " felt very bad," 
was " in great distress," " hardly knew what I said," and 
other such expressions. 

I should have been wholly devoid of sensibility if I 



400 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

had not felt keenly the suspicions, the false accusations, 
the reckless calumnies with which the public mind was 
filled, while the investigation was in progress. But there 
is not the smallest fragment of truth in the statement, or 
rather the insinuation, that I ever asked or wanted any- 
thing from Mr. Ames on this subject but simple justice 
and the truth. 

The spirit in which a portion of the public treated the 
men whose conduct was being investigated, may be un- 
derstood from the following question, put to Mr. Ames 
(page 361) in the midst of an examination, not at all re- 
lating to me : 

Q. In that conversation with Mr. Garfield, was anything said 
by him about your being an old man, near the end of your career, 
and his being comparatively a young man ? A. No, sir ; nothing 
of that sort. 

It is manifest that this question was suggested by 
some of the inventive bystanders, in hopes of making an 
item for a new sensation. 

The most absurd and exaggerated statements were 
constantly finding their way into the public press, in 
reference to every subject and person connected with the 
investigation, and this question is an illustration. 

In no communication with Mr. Ames did I ever say 
anything inconsistent with my testimony before the com- 
mittee. 

Conscious that I had done no wrong from the begin- 
ning to the end of this affair, I had nothing to conceal 
and no favors to ask, except that the whole truth should 
be known. I was in the committee-room but once during 



I 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 401 

the investigation, and I went there then only when sum- 
moned to give my testimony. 

CONCLUSIONS. 
From a review of the whole subject, the following con- 
clusions are fairly and clearly established : — • 

I. That the Credit Mobilier Company was a State 
corporation regularly organized ; and that neither its 
charter nor the terms of the contract, of October 15, 
1867, disclosed anything which indicated that the com- 
pany was engaged in any fraudulent or improper enter- 
prise. 

II. That a ring of seven persons inside the Credit 
Mobilier Company, calling themselves trustees, obtained 
the control of the franchises, and of a majority of the^ 
stock of both the Credit Mobilier and of the Union Pa- 
cific Railroad Company ; and while holding such double- 
control, they made a contract with themselves by which 
they received for building the road an extravagant sum, 
greatly beyond the real cost of construction ; and, in ad- 
justing the payments, they received stock and bonds of 
the railroad company, at a heavy discount, and by these 
means virtually robbed and plundered the road, whicb 
was in great part built by the aid of the United States. 

That these exorbitant profits were distributed, not to 
the stockholders of the Credit Mobilier proper, but to the 
ring of seven trustees and their proxies — holders of this 
ring stock — and that this arrangement was kept a close 
secret by its managers. 

III. That in 1867-68, Mr. Ames offered to seU small 
amounts of this stock to several leading members of Con- 

26 



402 JAMES A. GAKFIELD. 

gress, representing it as an ordinary investment promis- 
ing fair profits ; but in every such offer he concealed 
from such members the real nature of the arrangement 
by which the profits were to be made, as well as the 
amount of dividends likely to be realized. While thus 
offering this stock, he was writing to one of his ring 
associates that he was disposing of the stock " where it 
would do most good," intimating that he was thereby 
gaining influence in Congress, to prevent investigation 
into the affairs of the road. His letters and the list of 
names which he gave to McComb represent many per- 
sons as having bought the stock who never did buy or 
agree to buy it, and also represent a much larger amount 
sold than he did actually sell. Mr. Ames's letters and 
testimony abound in contradictions, not only of his own 
statements, but also of the statements of most of the 
other witnesses; and it is fair, in judging of its credi- 
bility, to take into account his interests involved in the 
controversy. 

IV. That in reference to myself the following points 
are clearly established by the evidence : 

1. That I neither purchased nor agreed to purchase 
the Credit Mobilier stock which Mr. Ames offered to sell 
me ; nor did I receive any dividend arising from it. This 
appears from my own testimony ; and from the first tes- 
timony given by Mr. Ames, which is not overthrown by 
his subsequent statements ; and is strongly confirmed by 
the fact that in the case of each of those who did pur- 
chase the stock, there was produced as evidence of the 
sale, either a certificate of stock, receipt of payment, a 
check drawn in the name of the payee, or entries in Mr. 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 403 

Ames's diary of a stock account marked " adjusted and 
closed ;" but that no one of these evidences exists in 
reference to me. This position is further confirmed by 
the subsequent testimony of Mr. Ames, who, though he 
claims that I did receive $329 from him on account of 
stock, yet he repeatedly testifies that beyond that amount 
I never received or demanded any dividend, that he did 
not offer me any, nor was the subject alluded to in con- 
versation between us. 

Mr. Ames admits, on page 40 of the testimony, that 
after December, 1867, the various stock and bond divi- 
dends, on the stock he had sold, amounted to an aggre- 
gate of more than 800 per cent. ; and that between Jan- 
uary, 1868, and May, 1871, all these dividends were paid 
to several of those who purchased the stock. My con- 
duct was wholly inconsistent with the supposition of 
such ownership ; for, during the year 1869, I was bor- 
rowing inoney to build a house here in Washington, and 
was securing my creditors by giving mortgages on my 
property ; and all this time it is admitted that I received 
no dividends and claimed none. 

The attempt to prove a sale of the stock to me is 
wholly inconclusive ; for it rests, first, on a check paya- 
ble to Mr. Ames himself, concerning which he several 
times says he does not know to whom it was paid ; and 
second, upon loose undated entries in his diary, which 
neither prove a sale of the stock nor any payment on 
account of it. 

The only fact from which it is possible for Mr. Ames 
to have inferred an agreement to buy the stock was the 
loan to me of $300. But that loan was made months be- 



404 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

fore the check of June 22, 1868, and was repaid in the 
winter of 1869 ; and after that date there were no trans- 
actions of any sort between us. 

And finally, before the investigation was ended, Mr. 
Ames admitted that on the chief point of difference be- 
tween us he might be mistaken. 

On page 356 he said he "considered me the pur- 
chaser of the stock, unless it was borrowed money I had 
of him;" and on page 461, at the conclusion of his last 
testimony, he said : 

Mr. Garfield understands this matter as a loan ; he says I did 
not explain it to him. 

Q. You need not say what Mr. Garfield says. Tell us what 
you think. 

A. Mr. Garfield might have misunderstood me. ... I 
supposed it was like all the rest, but when Mr. Garfield says he 
mistook it for a loan ; that he always understood it to be a loan ; 
that I did not make any explanation to him, and did not make 
any statement to him ; I may be mistaken. I am a man of few 
words, and I may not have made myself understood to him. 

2. That the offer which Mr. Ames made to me, as I 
understood it, was one which involved no wrong or im- 
propriety. I had no means of knowing and had no rea- 
son for supposing that behind this offer to sell me a small 
amount of stock, lay hidden a scheme to defraud the 
Pacific Railroad and imperil the interests of the United 
States. I was not invited to become a party to any 
scheme of spoliation, much less was I aware of any at- 
tempt to influence my legislative action, on any subject 
connected therewith. And on the first intimation of the 
real nature of the case, I declined any further considera- 
tion of the subject. 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 405 

3. That whatever may have been the facts in the 
case, I stated them in my testimony as I have always 
understood them; and there has been no contradiction, 
prevarication, or evasion on my part. 

This is demonstrated by the fact that I stated the 
case to Mr. Robison, in the spring of 1868, and to Mr. 
Hinsdale in the autumn of that year, and to Judge Black 
in the v/inter of 1869-70, substantially as it is stated in 
my testimony before the committee. 

I have shown that during the Presidential campaign I 
did not deny having known anything about the Credit 
Mobilier Company ; that the statement published in the 
Cincinnati Gazette, September 15, is substantially in ac- 
cord with my testimony before the committee ; and fi- 
nally that during the progress of the investigation there 
was nothing in my conversation or correspondence with 
Mr. Ames in any way inconsistent with the facts as given 
in my testimony. To sum it up in a word : out of an un- 
important business transaction, the loan of a trifling sum 
of money, as a matter of personal accommodation, and out 
of an offer never accepted, has arisen this enormous fabric 
of accusation and suspicion. 

If there be a citizen of the United States who is wil- 
ling to believe that for $329 I have bartered away my 
good name, and to falsehood have added perjury, these 
pages are not addressed to him. If there be one who 
thinks that any part of my public life has been gauged on 
so low a level as these charges would place it, I do not 
address him. I address those who are willing to believe 
that it is possible for a man to serve the public without 
personal dishonor. I have endeavored in this review, to 



406 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

point out the means by which the managers of a corpora 
tion, wearing the garb of honorable industry, have robbed 
and defrauded a great national enterprise, and attempted, 
by cunning and deception, for selfish ends, to enlist in its 
interest those who would have been the first to crush the 
attempt had their objects been known. 

If any of the scheming corporations or corrupt rings 
that have done so much to disgrace the country by their 
attempts to control its legislation, have ever found in me 
a conscious supporter or ally in any dishonorable scheme, 
they are at full liberty to disclose it. In the discussion 
of the many grave and difficult questions of public policy 
which have occupied the thoughts of the nation during 
the last twelve years, I have borne some part ; and I 
confidently appeal to the public records for a vindication 
of my conduct. 

JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

If anything were needed to add weight to the above 
masterly defence it would be found in the following 
letter from Judge Poland, of Vermont, to ex-Governor 
Ryland Fletcher, of the same State. Judge Poland, it 
will be remembered, was the chairman of the Credit 
Mobilier Investigating Committee : 

*' St. Johnsbuet, Vt., July 2, 1880. 
"I have mislaid or lost my copy of the evidence 
taken by the Credit Mobilier Investigating Committee 
and their report, and although I have a very clear recol- 
lection of the general features of the whole matter, I 
should not attempt to say anything in regard to details 
without a re-perusal of the volume. But if I had it 



I 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 407 

before me, it does not seem to me that there is occasion 
or need that I should review it for the purpose of reply- 
ing to such attacks on General Garfield as you have 
copied from the New York Express, or similar ones 
which may be found in many other Democratic papers. 
The transactions of Mr. Ames in Credit Mobilier stock 
were more than a dozen years ago ; the full investigation 
of the matter by the committee of which I was chairman 
was over eight years ago. At the time of the investiga- 
tion the public mind was greatly excited on the subject, 
and it involved the character and reputation of so many 
prominent men that probably no mere personal matter 
ever was so thoroughly canvassed and discussed by the 
reading and intelligent people of the country. After the 
most exhaustive discussion and reQection, the judgment 
of the people of this country was made up as to each 
man who was named as connected with it. Saying 
nothing in regard to any other man, I think I may most 
truthfully say that this public and popular judgment 
fully and absolutely acquitted General Garfield of all 
wrong, either in act or intent, in relation to the matter. 
No man could have been continued in public life, and 
constantly risen in public standing and in the public 
estimation, by the consent and approval of the best 
men of both parties, as General Garfield has, if there 
existed a suspicion of wrong-doing against him. I re- 
gard this popular and continued verdict of the people 
as conclusive. Every efibrt to reopen and unsettle it 
will, in my judgment, only recoil upon those who at- 
tempt it. In my judgment, the Republican press and 
Republican speakers who may spend then* time in re- 



408 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

arguing a matter so many years ago passed into final 
judgment will only waste their breath. The great is- 
sues between the parties, which so largely affect the 
welfare of the people and the country, are the topics 
to be discussed and decided in the coming campaign. 
These are what the people desire to be enlightened 
upon; they are already satisfied that the $329 case 
was finally and properly decided many years ago. I 
presume you have seen a short note I sent to the State 
Convention. In that I said all I wished to say. 

" Luke P. Poland." 

Another charge brought against General Garfield 
was that in 1872 he received a fee of five thousand dol- 
lars for securing an appropriation in fiivor of a certain 
contract for paving certain streets of Washington City. 
This contract was in favor of what is known as the De 
Golyer pavement. At this time General Garfield was 
chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and it was 
charged that he was paid this sum to secure his influence 
for the De Golyer Company. The truth was that the 
fee was paid him for services rendered as a lawyer, after 
the adjournment of Congress, and had no connection 
whatever with the appropriation granted by Congress. 
Grave charges having been brought against the De Gol- 
yer company, the House of Representatives appointed a 
committee to investigate the matter. Before this com- 
mittee General Garfield appeared in February, 1879, and 
made the following statement which explains his true 
connection with the matter, and places the facts in the 
case so fairly and plainly before the public that the most 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 409 

inveterate enemy must, if honest, acknowledge the suc- 
cess of his vindication, and acquit him of either intentional 
or actual wrong-doing. 

" Mr. Garfield. — Mr. Chairman, I never saw this con- 
tract before, but I want to say a word in regard to the 
word ' appropriation' used in it. It has no more refer- 
ence to Congress than it has to Great Britain. The 
Board of Public Works, under the general law and the 
legislation of the District government, made the appro- 
priations themselves, and taxed the people of the Dis- 
trict along the streets where these improvements were 
made, by the front foot; and I in common with other 
property-holders of the District, paid my assessment 
levied by the Board of Public Works for the improve- 
ments made in front of my property ; and the appropria- 
tion here referred to is the appropriation by the District 
government, either out of the funds that it had raised by 
bonds issued on the credit of the District or by assess- 
ments by the District authorities upon the people whose 
property was improved. The only connection that the 
United States had with it in reference to appropriations 
was this : — Whenever the Board of Public Works laid 
a pavement on a street upon which any United States 
building or ground was situated, Congress, as a matter of 
course, as it does in every other city of the Union, paid its 
quota of the assessment per front foot. That is the only 
relation that Congress had to any of these improvements, 
except in so far as we have been compelled subsequently 
to advance money to pay the interest on their bonds, 
which of course was a matter that nobody could have 
foreseen. 



410 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" Mr. Nickerson. — Allow me to ask you a question. 

« Mr. Garfield.— Certainly. 

" Mr. Nickerson. — In view of your explanation, I ask 
you to state what this provision in this award in relation 
to that fifty thousand square yards refers to — what ap- 
propriation that refers to, around the parks or anywhere 
else? 

" Mr. Garfield. — I cannot be expected to explain the 
language of this contract which I have never seen, but if 
the chairman will look at the Appropriation Bill, espe- 
cially in 1873, he will find that there were three appro- 
priations made; one ($180,000, I think) to reimburse 
the old Washington corporation previous to the creation 
of the Board of Public Works, for work that was done 
around the Government reservation. The old canal had 
been filled up and the Smithsonian grounds had been 
bettered by that improvement, and there was an appro- 
priation to reimburse the old corporation for that part of 
their improvements which lay opposite the public grounds 
of the United States ; and in the same bill there was also 
an appropriation made to reimburse the Board of Public 
Works for the Government's share of the improvements 
made in front of the public buildings and grounds. 

" The Chairman. — Do you recollect the amount of 
that appropriation ? 

"Mr. Garfield.— I think it was about $180,000. I 
ought to say, however, that tliat was put on, not in the 
House but in the Senate. I was not on the conference ; 
I had nothing to do with it. It was perfectly right if I 
had been on the committee, but I was not. That had no 
more to do with anybody's pavement, or with any par- 



CREDIT MOBILIER— TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 411 

ticular contract for any particular patent or pavement, 
than with the man in the moon. 

" Mr. Nickerson. — You haven't answered my question. 
If your explanation is correct, can you say why it is 
that that 50,000 square yards is made absolutely contin- 
gent upon an appropriation to be made by Congress ? 
That is a matter that would necessarily come directly 
before Congress. 

" Mr. Garfield. — Not at all. It would come from the 
appropriation of the district authorities. Mr. Chairman, 
I never saw this contract before in my life, jmd I had 
nothing whatever to do with its terms, and therefore I 
am not responsible for any meaning that anybody may 
attribute to its language. 

"Now, the whole story is plainly and briefly told. A 
day or two before the adjournment of the Congress which 
adjourned in the latter part of May or the first part of 
June, 1872, Richard C. Parsons, who was a practising 
lawyer in Cleveland, but was then the Marshal of the 
Supreme Court, and an old acquaintance of mine, came 
to my house and said that he was called away summarily 
by important business ; that he was retained in a case on 
which he had spent a great deal of time, and that there 
was but one thing remaining to be done, to make a brief 
of the relative merits of a large number of wooden pave- 
ments ; that the Board of PubHc Works had agreed that 
they would put down a certain amount of concrete, and a 
certain amount of other kinds of pavement; that they 
hnd fixed the price at which they would put down each 
of the different kinds, and that the only thing remaining 
was to determine which was the best pavement of each 



412 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

of the several kinds. He said he should lose his fee 
unless the brief on the merits of these pavements was 
made, and that he was suddenly and necessarily called 
away home ; and he asked me to prepare the brief. He 
brought his papers to my house and models of the pave- 
ment. I told him I could not look at the case until the 
end of the session. When Congress adjourned I sat down 
to the case, in the most open manner, as I would prepare 
a brief for the Supreme Court, and worked upon this 
matter. There were perhaps forty kinds of wood pave- 
ment and several chemical analyses of the ingredients of 
the different pavements. I went over the whole ground 
carefully and thoroughly, and prepared a brief on the 
relative claims of these pavements for the consideration 
of the board. This was all I did. I had nothing to do 
with the terms of the contract, I knew nothing of its 
conditions, and I never had a word to say about the con- 
ditions, and I never had a word to say about the price of 
the pavement. I knew nothing about it ; I simply made 
a brief upon the relative merits of the various patent 
pavements ; and it no more occurred to me that the 
thing I was doing had relation to a ring, or to a body of 
men connected with any scheme, or in any way connected 
with Congress, or related in any way to any of my duties 
in connection with the Committee on Appropriations, than 
it occurred to me that it was interfering with your per- 
sonal rights as a citizen. I prepared the brief and went 
home. Mr. Parsons subsequently sent me a portion of his 
own fee. A year later, when the affairs of the District 
of Columbia came to be overhauled, Congress became 
satisfied that the government of the District had better 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 413 

be abolished, and this whole matter was very thoroughly 
investigated by a committee of the two Houses. They 
went into the question of the merits of the pavement, 
some claiming that it was bad, and some claiming that 
the Government had paid too much for it. Mr. Chitten- 
den was called as a witness. I ought to say here that I 
never saw Mr. Chittenden until about the time I made 
the brief; I did not and do not know De Golyer and 
McClelland ; I would not know them on the street ; I am 
not aware that I ever saw Mr. Nickerson before ; and if 
anybody in this business had any scheme relating to me, 
it was never mentioned to me in the remotest way. It 
never was suggested to me that this matter could relate 
to my duties as a member of Congress in any way what- 
ever. All that I did was done openly. Everybody who 
called on me could have seen what I was doing, and if 
there was any intention or purpose on the part of any- 
body to connect me in any way with any ring or any 
dishonorable scheme it was sedulously concealed from me. 
As I have said, three years ago a joint committee of the 
two Houses investigated this matter thoroughly. Mr. 
Parsons was summoned, and was examined, and cross-ex- 
amined ; Mr. Chittenden was examined ; Mr. Nickerson 
was examined. When I heard that my name was being 
used in the matter, I went to the chairmen on both sides 
— for it was a joint committee. Senator Thurman, of my 
own State, was on the comm.ctee ; Mr. Jewett, now 
President of the Erie Railway, was on the committee. I 
said to the chairmen that, if there was anything in con- 
nection with the case which reflected upon me, and that 
they thought I ought to answer, I would be obliged to 



414 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

them if they would inform me. The chairman on the 
part of the House, Mr. Wilson, said that he had looked 
the matter all over, and that what I had done was per- 
fectly proper ; but if anything should occur to make any 
explanation necessary, I could appear before the commit- 
tee ; he would send me word. He never did send for me. 
Very soon after that my poUtical campaign in Ohio opened. 
" Ever}^ man in public life is blessed with enemies as 
well as friends ; and no sooner had my campaign opened 
than the New York Sun published thirteen columns, I 
believe, containing almost every form of public and private 
assault upon me, among other things quoting this testi- 
mony in such a way as to make it appear that what I 
had done compromised my position as Chairman of the 
Committee on Appropriations. I went before the people 
of my district and discussed the whole matter; and in a 
speech which was printed and circulated by thousands, 
every part and parcel of this charge was made as public 
as anything could be. It was revived to some extent in 
the campaign last fall, and all possible new light thrown 
upon it. In the course of the campaign of 1874 a gentle- 
man from my district wrote in regard to it to Mr. Wilson, 
the chairman of the joint committee on the part of the 
House, and received a letter in reply, which I read : — 

" ' CoNNELLSViLLE, Ind., Aug. 1, 1874. 
" * Hon. George W. Steele — Dear Sir : — To the re- 
quest for information as to whether or not the action of 
General Garfield, in connection with the affairs of the 
District of Columbia, was the subject of condemnation in 
the committee that recently had those affairs under con- 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION". 415 

sideration, I answer that it was not ; nor was there, in my 
opinion, any evidence that would have warranted any un- 
favorable criticism upon his conduct. 

" ^ The facts disclosed by the evidence, so far as he is 
concerned, are briefly these : 

" * The Board of Public Works was considering the 
question as to the kind of pavements that should be laid. 
There was a contest as to the respective merits of va- 
rious wooden pavements. Mr. Parsons represented, as 
attorney, the De Golyer and McClellan patent, and being 
called away from Washington about the time the hearing 
was to be had before the Board of Public Works on this 
subject, procured General Garfield to appear before the 
hoard in his stead and argue the merits of his patent. 
This he did, and this was the whole of his connection in 
the matter. It was not a question as to the kind of con- 
tract that should be made, but as to whether this particu- 
lar kind of pavement should be laid. The criticism of the 
committee was not upon the pavement in favor of which 
General Garfield argued, but was upon the contract made 
with reference to it; and there was no evidence which 
would warrant the conclusion that he had anything to do 
with the latter. Very respectfully, etc., 

" ' J. M. Wilson.* 

" I want to say this, further : That if anybody in the 
world holds that my fee in connection with this pavement, 
even by suggestion or implication, had any relation what- 
ever to any appropriation by Congress for anything con- 
nected with the District, or with anything else, it is due 
to me, it is due to this committee, and it is due to Con- 



416 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

gress, that that person be summoned. If there be a man 
on this earth who makes such a charge, that man is the 
most infamous perjurer that lives, and I shall be glad to 
confront him anywhere in this world. I am quite sure 
this committee will not allow hearsay and contradictory 
testimony to raise a presumption against me. Now, I 
will say very frankly to the committee that, if I had 
known or imngined that there was an intent such as this 
witness insinuates, on the part of anybody, that my em- 
ployment by a brother lawyer to prepare a brief on a 
perfectly legitimate question — a question of the relative 
merits of certain lawful patents — had any connection 
whatever, or any supposed connection in the mind of any 
man, with my public duties, I certainly would have takea 
no such engagement. I would have been a weak and 
very foolish man to have done so, and I trust that gentle- 
men who know me will believe that I would at least have 
had too much respect for my own ambition to have done 
such a thing. 

" By the Chairman — Q. What was the amount that 
Mr. Parsons did pay you of his fee ? A. Five thousand 
dollars. I do not think he mentioned any sum at the 
time he asked me to make the argument. He said that 
he was to receive a large fee, and he would share it with 
me. I am not sure that he then mentioned the amount, 
or what he would pay me, but he said that the fee was a 
large one, and that there was a large amount involved. 
When I made the argument I went home to Ohio, and 
some time in the month of July, I think, or perhaps a 
month afterwards, Mr. Parsons deposited in bank to my 
credit $5,000. 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 417 

By Mr. Culbertson — Q. Who paid those fees. A. I 
do not know. I never knew anything about that at all. 
Mr. Parsons engaged me. Nobody else spoke to me 
about it. The only relation I had to it at all was with 
him. Mr. Parsons' testimony on the subject is very full, 
and is true, as I remember it. 

" By the Chairman — Q. Did Mr. Parsons say to you 
that his fee or yours would be contingent on the award of 
a contract for 200,000 square yards of pavement? A. Oh, 
no, sir ; I do not think he said that. He said : * I am in 
danger of losing an important fee unless I make this argu- 
ment, and I cannot do it ; I must go away, and I will pay 
you a share of what I get if you will make the brief.' I 
don't remember that he said whether it was contingent or 
absolute. I simply acted on his request. 

" Q. Your brief was made and filed ? A. Certainly. 
I labored over the case a good many days. I remember 
among other papers which I examined were some pam- 
phlets giving an account of the working of this pavement 
in California, and, I think, in Chicago. There were two 
or three chemical analyses of the materials used I had 
to examine ; I think nearly forty of the different patents. 
The understanding was that the merits of the different 
competing pavements were to be laid before the board 
in order that they might determine their relative merits. 
I do not think I knew anything about the price that was 
to be paid per square yard ; certainly it was none of my 
affair ; I had nothing to do with it or to say about it. 

"By Mr. Pratt — Q. It was not involved in the 
question submitted to you ? A. It was not involved 
in the question at all, because, as I understood, the 
27 



418 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Board of Engineers had beforehand determined that for 
wood pavements they would pay so much, for concrete 
so much, and for other kinds so much. The property- 
holders on a street made a request for whichever pave- 
ment they preferred — concrete, Belgian, or wooden — and, 
when the petitions of the property- holders were filed 
with the board, they gave the different streets the kinds 
of pavement asked for by the people. 

" By the Chairman — Q. Had you any knowledge at 
the time that the Advisory Board had passed a condem- 
natory judgment upon this ? A. I had not, nor have I 
now. I only knew that there was a considerable amount 
of wooden pavement to be laid, because the citizens 
had asked for it. I had no knowledge of the matter 
except what I had got from the papers before me. I 
recollect among other things, that it was certified from 
the Board of Public Works of Chicago that this pave- 
ment had stood there better than any other wooden 
pavement they had ever had, and I believe there was 
similar testimony from the city authorities of San Fran- 
cisco. 

" Q. Had you any previous knowledge as an expert 
in the qualities of different pavements ? A. I had had 
considerable experience in patents and patent law gen- 
erally ; I had been engaged in the Goodyear rubber case 
in the Supreme Court, and I was familiar with patent 
law. I have been practising in the Supreme Court here 
since 1866; I do practice constantly, as much as my 
public duties allow. 

" Q. Do you recollect whether at the subsequent 
session of Congress there was |1,200,000 appropriated 



CREDIT MOBILIER TRIUMPHANT VINDICATION. 419 

for the Board of Public Works ? A. I remember that 
there was a large appropriation made for improvements 
made by the Board of Public Works in front of the 
public buildings and grounds, but none was made for 
any particular pavement or contract. I do not remem- 
ber how large the appropriation was, for it was put on 
in the Senate, in the last hours of the session, while I 
was on a conference on the unfortunate salary bill, and 
was adopted while I was out, and I knew nothing at all 
about its origin or progress. I know that in one of the 
bills that I had charge of at about that time there was 
a restrictive clause upon the board inserted, because we 
thought it had begun to do too much. 

" The Chairman.— I don't think, Mr. Garfield, that it 
has been testified here, directly, that any proposition, 
in so many words, was made to you in relation to any 
jjppropriation made by Congress, but there have been 
put in evidence here extracts from letters, which were 
written by Chittenden from this city to'De Golyer and 
McClelland, after interviews with you. 

" Mr. Garfield. — Of course, Mr. Chairman, you will 
see the utter impossibility of one man being made re- 
sponsible for what another man writes about him. I 
cannot, of course, say what has been written about me. 
If I had it all before me, it would be a very mixed 
chapter, I have no doubt, as it would be in the case of 
any of us. 

" The Chairman. — There has been no direct testi- 
mony that any such proposition was ever made to you. 

" Mr. Garfield. — If there is any testimony of that sort 
it is false, and I shall be obliged if you will let me know." 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CHICAGO CONVENTION. GENERAL GARFIELD NOMINATED 

FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The Chicago Convention — Description of the Hall — General Garfield a Del- 
egate from Ohio — Cordial Reception by the Convention — Opening of 
the Proceedings — The First Day's Work — Events of the Second Day — 
The Struggle between Grant and Blaine — Parliamentary Skirmishing — 
Proceedings of the Third Day — Report of the Committee on Credentials 
— The Evening Session — The Fight over Illinois — The Fourth Day's 
Session — The Grant Lines show Signs of Weakness — Garfield's Mas- 
terly Management of the Ohio Delegation — Nomination of Candidates 
— Blaine and Grant Presented — General Garfield Nominates John Sher- 
man — A Noble Speech — The Fifth Day's Session — Balloting for the 
Presidential Candidates — A Stubborn Fight — A Detailed Statement of 
the Ballots — The Sixth and Last Day — Wisconsin Votes for Garfield — 
The General endeavors to Stop the Movement in his Favor — He is un- 
successful—The Break to Garfield— The Thirty-sixth Ballot— Garfield 
Nominated for the Presidency — Exciting Scenes in the Convention — 
The Nomination Made Unanimous — Nomination of Vice-President — 
How Garfield's Nomination was brought about — Platform of the Re- 
publican Party for 1880. 

The National Convention of the Republican party met 
at Chicago, on the 2d of June, 1880. General Garfield 
attended it as the leader of the delegation from Ohio. 

The place of meeting was the large hall of the Ex- 
position Building. The correspondent of the Neio York 
Herald said of it on the day the convention assembled : 

*' The entire building is divided into sections — A, B, 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 421 

C, and so on. Each section has its door, each door its 
official, each official the Chicago courtesy, passing which, 
the visitor finds himself in a hall 300 feet long and 150 
feet wide. The platform is in the south end and the 
seats for delegates and alternates on the main floor run- 
ning from the platform back about two hundred feet. 
On the other side of this, and running entirely round the 
building, are commodious galleries capable of seating in 
the neighborhood of nine thousand people. This, with 
the space for delegates, gives a seating capacity of be- 
tween ten thousand and eleven thousand persons. The 
crowd outside is immense, and has been since early 
morning ; but as the rules of admission are rigidly en- 
forced the outsiders are compelled to content themselves 
with cheers and shouts and an occasional growl. The 
delegations which had been bothered beyond conception 
in getting tickets of admission were very slow in arriving. 
At half-past eleven there was no one in the hall beyond 
a large and very active band and a few enterprising cor- 
respondents who remembered the luck of the early bird. 

" Little banners, shield-shaped, with Alabama, Ari- 
zona, and so on, printed on them, indicated the situation 
of each delegation. The A's sat in the front benches, 
and the rest of the alphabet followed seriatim. The con- 
sequence is that Texas, West Virginia, and the other low 
down letters are much nearer the band and the rear than 
they fancy. To compare it with Madison Square Garden, 
imagine the stage placed at the Madison Avenue end and 
benches placed on the floor back to the cascade, where 
the band forms the lower line of a high stretch of seats 
for the public. The Alabama delegates are in the upper 



422 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

left-bfind corner, having all of seat 1 aud part of seat 
22. Then follow, in order, down the left side, including 
all of the first row and a portion of the second, Arkan- 
sas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, 
Georgia, and Illinois, ending with Indiana in the lower 
left corner. Iowa commences with the right end ol 
No. 45 and left end of No. 69. Then, in order, Kan- 
sas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachu- 
setts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, ending 
with Arizona, and the District of Columbia on seat No. 
46. Nebraska commences on No. 70, then follow down 
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, 
Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Dakota, Idaho 
and Montana, ending with New Mexico on No. 93. 
Utah is on the lower right corner. Then follow up on the 
right side, in order, Washington Territory, Texas, Penn- 
sylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, 
ending with Wisconsin in upper right corner on seat No. 
96. Alternates are arranged in strictly alphabetical 
order. Commencing with Alabama, on seat No. 115, 
they follow down to No. 144, then comtnence with No. 
174, running up to No. 145. Next comes No. 175, run- 
ning down to No. 204, where the Wisconsin alternates 
will be seated." 

General Garfield's appearance in the Convention was 
greeted with enthusiastic applause from the delegates 
and the audience. After the organization of the Con- 
vention he was appointed one of the Committee on Rules. 
This appointment was received with applause. A de- 
spatch to the New York Herald from Chicago that night, 
said: 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 423 

" The name of General Garfield is also assuming 
prominence as a possible nomination of the Ohio delega- 
tion, should it be necessary to withdraw the name of Mr. 
Sherman. General Garfield will present the name of Mr. 
Sherman, and his speech and manner, it is thought, will 
make a very favorable impression on the Convention. 
The applause which greeted the name to-day when it was 
announced that he had been selected by the Ohio delega- 
tion to serve in the Committee on Rules was a marked 
compliment to him, which has not been forgotten to-night 
in the calculations of the thoughtful men." 

The hour appointed for the meeting of the Conven- 
tion was twelve o'clock Wednesday, June 2, 1880. " The 
Alabama delegation," says Mr. A. K. McClure, writing 
to the Philadelphia Times, " was first to file in as a body, 
and its two rows of President-makers nestled down in 
front of the stage, displaying every shade of complex- 
ion, from the pure white to the genuine African. Arkan- 
sas fell in greatly behind Alabama, with the familiar face 
of ex-Senator Dorsey at the head. Meantime the places 
allotted to the various States were being rapidly filled up 
by the rank and file of the delegations. But the leaders 
were slow in getting to their respective commands. The 
dignitaries who had been assigned to the seats for dis- 
tinguished guests began to swarm in, and Frye, of Maine, 
and Chandler, of New Hampshire, buzzed them as they 
gathered in little knots to discuss the situation. General 
Beaver, chairman of the Pennsylvania delegation, swung 
himself along the side aisle on his crutches and sat down 
at the post of honor for his State, with Quay close b}' his 
side, and Cessna flitted hither and thither as if uncer- 



424 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

tain that anything would be well done unless he gave it 
a helping hand. McManes dropped in Lite, a little paled 
by illness, but with all his Scotch-Irish doggedness writ- 
ten in his fixce. Jewell and Creswell, both of the Grant 
cabinet, came in about the same time, the first hoping to 
look down on the defeat of his old chief from the gallery 
of distinguished guests, and the other marshalling his 
delegation to give him back his Old Commander. 

" Both look fresh and rosy as they did when they 
hugged their portfolios and enjoyed the hollow homage 
that is paid to honor at the Capital. The tall, sturdy 
form of ' Long John ' Wentworth towered over all as he 
joined his delegation. He is stouter, redder, grayer and 
balder than eight years ago, when he rebelled against 
Grant. He has returned to his first love, and now wilts 
down his collars early in the morning working and cheer- 
ing for the Silent Man. 

" Just when the building had pretty nearly filled up 
there was a simultaneous huzzah throughout the hall and 
galleries, and it speedily broke out in a hearty applause. 
The tall and now silvered plume of Conkling was visible 
in the aisle, and he strode down to his place at the head 
of his delegation with the majesty of an emperor. He 
recognized the compliment by a modest bow, without lift- 
ing his eyes to the audience, and took his seat as serenely 
as if on a picnic and hoUday. He has aged rapidly dur- 
ing the last year, and his once golden locks are thinned 
and whitened, while hard lines dispel the brightness of his 
finely-chiselled face. The Grant men seemed to be more 
comfortable when they found him by their side and evi- 
dently ready for the conflict. The sable Grant men from 



CHICAGO CONVENTION — NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 425 

the South, who believe Grant to be their political savior, 
look upon Conkling as his prophet, and they worship him 
as a demigod. Logan's swarthy features, flowing mous- 
tache and Indian hair were next visible on the eastern 
aisle, but he stepped to the head of his delegation so 
quietly that he escaped a special welcome. He sat as if 
in sober reflection for a few moments and then hastened 
over to Conkling to perfect their counsel on the eve of 
battle. The two senatorial leaders held close conference 
until the bustle about the chair gave notice that the op- 
posing lines were about to begin to feel each other and 
test their position. 

'' Cameron had just stepped upon the platform with 
the elasticity of a boy, and his youthful but strongly- 
marked face was recognized at once. There was no ap- 
plause. They all knew that he never plays for the gal- 
leries and that cheers are wasted upon him. The man 
who can bring him votes when he is in want of them can 
make his cold gray eyes kindle and his usually stolid 
features toy with a smile, but no man in the land more 
justly estimates the crowd that ever cheers the coming 
guest than does Cameron. He quietly sat down for ten 
minutes, although the time for calling the convention to 
order had passed by an hour, and he looked out upon the 
body so big with destiny for himself and his Grant asso- 
ciates. Passing by I asked him : ' What of the battle V 
To which he answered : ' We have three hundred to start 
with, and we will stick until we win.' 

" It was said with all the determination that his posi- 
tive manner and expression could add to language, and it 
summed up his whole strategy. While he waited the 



426 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

vacant places were fast filling up. Generals Sewell and 
Kilpatrick took their posts at the head of the New Jersey 
men, and just behind them the rosy faces of Garfield and 
Foster and the tall, spare form of Dennison were holding 
a hasty last council of the Sherman wing of the opposi- 
tion. The youthful olive-shaded features of Bruce, of 
Mississippi, were visible in the centre of his delegation, 
and the dream of the Vice-Presidency made him restless 
and anxious. 

"At five minutes after one Cameron quickly rose 
from his chair, advanced to the front and brought his 
gavel down gently upon the speaker's desk. At once the 
confused hum of voices began to still, and the nearly ten 
thousand people present settled into perfect order. Cam- 
eron stood for half a minute after silence had been ob- 
tained, apparently free from all embarrassment, and 
finally said, in a clear voice : 

" ' The convention will come to order, and will be 
opened with prayer.' 

" The prayer followed, and was a very satisfactory 
test of the acoustic qualities of the hall. Then followed 
the reading of the call by Secretary Keogh, when Cam- 
eron enlisted the utmost attention by adjusting his eye- 
glasses and drawing from his coat-pocket a single sheet of 
foolscap paper. All knew that he would speak briefly, if 
at all, and that if he had anything to say he would say it 
with directness, and none were mistaken. In a speech of 
not over two minutes he got in some most telling blows 
for Grant, which were w^armly cheered. He read his 
speech, and the delivery was clear and forcible. 

" He closed by nominating Hoar for temporary chair- 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 427 

niMTi and put the question at once, and the unanimous ap- 
proval of the convention, as evinced by its mingled votee 
and cheers, transferred the organization of the body to 
the anti-third-term combination. They breathed more 
freely when they saw Cameron out of the chair and Hoar 
in his place. But Cameron retired complacently, and both 
sides seemed to understand that victory to either depend- 
ed upon the skill or accidents of future conflicts. Sen- 
ator Hoar s benignant face and clerical cloth of the mod- 
ern Puritan pattern were presented to the convention, 
and hearty applause greeted them. Mr. Hoar delivered 
an appropriate address, which was well received, and the 
work of the convention began. 

" Hale, of Maine, first took the floor as Blaine's chief 
lieutenant. Every one waited eagerly to hear whether he 
was about to open the battle, but he simply offered the 
usual resolutions for a call of States to report committee- 
men. Routine business dragged along for some time, 
when Frye, of Maine, arose on the platform and called 
attention to the omission of Utah from the committee on 
credentials. He is Hale's fellow-leader of the Blaine men, 
and he is a fluent and skilful debater. His motion to 
have Utah represented in the committee was soon under- 
stood to be an attack on a vital part of the Grant line. 
As Conkling rose in his majestic and peaceful way to re- 
ply, a storm of applause welcomed him as the ' leader of 
leaders.' He at once locked horns with the gritty Blaine 
advocate. He made a most plausible special plea for the 
omission of Utah along with Louisiana, but Frye came 
back with the statement of the secretary of the National 
Committee that the omission was an accident and a mis- 



428 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

take, and called out the ever-ready enthusiasm of the 
Blaine side. Conkling saw that his position was untena- 
ble, and he fell back in excellent order. The fiery Logan 
mounted his chair and offered a resolution for the admis- 
sion of the five hundred veteran soldiers who are attend- 
ing the convention. He knows just how to make a clap- 
trap speech for the veterans, and as they are generally 
Grant men, who were brought here to help the cause 
along, he played his veteran card for all that was in it. 
General Kilpatrick, who loves to spejik on all questions, 
and especially on behalf of the soldiers, seconded Logan's 
effort. The anti-Grant men did not dare to offer opposi- 
tion to the Grant reserves, for the galleries and Logan car- 
ried his motion, with generous applause from the Grant 
men. 

" That ended the skirmishing in the field for the day, 
and Conkling hastened an adjournment until to-morrow at 
eleven o'clock without a contest. The battle was then 
transferred back to the lobbies of the hotels. 

" The convention reassembled at eleven o'clock on the 
morning of the 3d of June. Conkling strode majestically 
down the aisle, bowed to the cheers which greeted him on 
every side, and the smile that played upon his face told 
that his antagonists, with a clear majority against him, 
had given him another day to lash them and a chance to 
return them defeat for their blunder. Cameron was with 
his delegation on the floor, as were Logan, Cress well, and 
Boutweli, and they all displayed the self-satisfaction of 
repulsed chieftains who felt confident of fearfully punish- 
ing if not routing the Blaine men before the battle closed. 
Hamlin's dark face deepened the lines of age by the anx- 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 429 

lety that he could not conceal about the result of a battle 
that had to be fought for a day in skirmishes against 
superior strategists. A general engagement would give 
them certain victory if it could be forced at once. Fryc 
and Hale were nervous and fretful under their now visible 
mistake, and attempted to relieve their error only to be 
defeated by Garfield finally coming in against their un- 
protected flank. After they had forced him into the ac- 
tion Conkling opened what he knew could be only an 
affair of outposts and one in which he must suffer least. 
With utmost coolness and all the air of a master he rose 
and moved a recess until six o'clock, giving the plausible 
reasons that the committee on credentials could not report 
earlier than four, and that the convention should not at- 
tempt any important business until its membership was 
ascertained. Hale sprang to his feet to grapple with the 
half-vanquished but yet fearfully dangerous Grant cham- 
pion. He pleaded against delay, and quoted the prece- 
dent of Cincinnati in 1876, when the committees on rules 
and organization reported before the committee on cre- 
dentials. He spoke well, but illy concealed the knowl- 
edge that Conkling was seeking to profit as large and as 
conspicuously as possible by a Blaine blunder. 

" Conkling's reply was masterly in its unexpressed 
contempt and scathing sarcasm. His keen arrow struck 
just where he had aimed it, and Hale's irritation broke his 
voice so that his reply was unimpressive. But he got in 
a parting shot at his antagonist that allowed him to cover 
his retreat in a storm of applause. Both exhibited the 
utmost bitterness, but Conkling's polished oratory made 
even his venom sublime. Hale won on the first vote by 



430 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

defeating Conkling's motion, and while the now growing 
Blaine enthusiasm shouted over the victory, Conkling 
smiled and coolly waited his time, that he knew was 
near at hand. The report of the committee on organiza- 
tion was made and disposed of in a few minutes. When 
they came to the front to retrieve the Blaine folly of de- 
laying the committee on credentials, by moving that thS 
committee on rules be instructed to report, both sides 
knew what the report was, and that it contained one rule 
limiting speakers to five minutes. If they could carry 
that report, before the report of the committee on con- 
tested seats, the blunder of delay would be partially cor- 
rected, as it would prevent the debate against time that 
the Grant men mean to make on the disputed delegations. 
Logan tried to drive Frye back by points of order, but 
failed, and when General Sharpe, the New York member 
of the committee, said that he was instructed to make 
a minority report, and that the committee had voted to 
withhold the majority report until after the contested 
seats were disposed of, Conkling's grim smile told how he 
enjoyed Frye's discomfiture. But they foolishly appealed 
to General Garfield, chairman of the committee, and Gar- 
field was compelled, but with evident reluctance, to sus- 
tain the statements made by General Sharpe. Frye was 
now completely unhorsed, and had to withdraw his own 
motion, and followed it with a motion to adjourn until five 
o'clock. 

" This brought Conkling to his feet to enjoy his vic- 
tory, and, in one of his grandest flights of irony, he 
congratulated the Maine man on having kept ten thou- 
sand people in uncomfortable seats for two hours to ac- 



CHICAGO CONTENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 431 

complish just what he proposeii to accomplish when the 
convention met. All of Conkling's bitterness was thrown 
into his effort to portraj the littleness of Blaine's leaders, 
and he sat down amidst thunders of applause. The vast 
audience had seen the first blood drawn by the gladiator 
and they wanted more. They called for Frye and Hale 
until Frye mounted his chair for a farewell broadside at 
his dreaded antagonist, and he got it in neatly and stopped 
at the right point. With a good imitation of Conkling's 
patronizing manner, he returned the thanks of the Maine 
delegation to the gentleman from New York for his con- 
gratulations, and he added that he hoped when the work 
of the convention shall have been concluded, Mr. Conk- 
ling would send his congratulations to the gentleman 
from Maine. It was a fair hit, and even Conkling joined 
the audience in its shouts of laughter. The convention 
then adjourned. 

" When it reassembled at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, 
it was announced that the committee on contested seats 
would not be ready to report until late in the evening. 
This fretted the Blaine leaders, who have held the 
Grant men as the under-dogs all day, and had the gal- 
leries fully impressed with the belief that Blaine would 
be nominated as soon as a vote could be reached. They 
felt that they had blundered by delay, and they plunged 
in to multiply their blunders, in the vain hope that they 
could recover their lost opportunity. Henderson, of Iowa, 
opened the Blaine fire by renewing Frye's motion of the 
morning session to instruct the committee on rules to 
report. The sable gentleman in that Blaine wood-pile is 
hidden in the rule known to have been adopted by the 



432 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

committee limiting debate to five-minute speeches, and 
if that rule could be established before the report of the 
committee on credentials, it would cut off the expected 
long debate on the disputed seats. It was a desperate 
and awkward struggle of the Blaine men to regain the 
golden hours they had thrown away, but it provoked a 
running debate in which they suffered greatly. Logan 
and Boutwell made earnest protests, but Gen. Harrison, 
who has a wistful eye on the Vice-Presidency, crushed 
out the petty strategy of Henderson by a manly and elo- 
quent appeal for fair play and free debate. General 
Sharpe followed and put the Blaine men in the attitude of 
seeking to violate the plighted faith of the entire com- 
mittee, by which it was agreed that their report should 
not be made until the contested seats were settled, and 
thus avoid the arbitrary limitation of debate on the great 
preliminary battle. General Garfield, chairman of the 
committee on rules, sustained General Sharpe as to the 
action of the committee, but invited the convention to 
instruct him to report. General Sharpe followed by a 
shrewd exhibition of strategy in the shape of an amend- 
ment requiring the committee on contested seats to re- 
port at once. 

" This brought the opposing forces face to face. 
When he demanded a vote by call of the States it 
forced the first test of the strength of the Grant and 
combined opposition factions, and the most intense ex- 
citement and repeated outbreaks of applause attended 
the roll-call. The unit-rule question was speedily setr 
tied when the first State was called. The chairman of 
the Alabama delegation reported the vote as 20 for the 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 433 

Sharpe amendment, but when a colored delegate pro- 
tested and said that he wished his vote recorded in the 
negative, President Hoar answered : ' The vote will be 
so recorded,' and the unit rule disappeared amidst vocif- 
erous cheers. The vote for Sharpe's amendment was 
a clean Grant vote, outside of Vermont, whose dele- 
gation erected a very legible finger-board to lead the 
Grant men to Edmunds as the dark horse by voting 
solid with the Grant men. It made a visible flutter 
throughout the convention, and sent a chill to many of 
the ardent Blaine men. It proved that Cameron, Conk- 
ling, and Edmunds understood each other, and that Ed- 
munds is the heir apparent of the Grant dynasty. Penn- 
sylvania voted 31 to 23, showing that Blaine has made 
no progress in his native State to-day, with all the ap- 
parent tide in his favor and the ebb of the Grant cause ;, 
and when Conkling reported exactly the same number of 
Blaine men in New York, the stubborn staying qualities^ 
of the defeated Grant men greatly sobered the leaders, 
who believed the nomination of Blaine to be assured by 
the general disintegration of the third-termers. The 
vote footed up 318 for Sharpe's amendment, and 406. 
against it, exhibiting 308 positive Grant votes, leaving 
out Vermont, and but 88 majority for the combined, 
Blaine, Sherman, Washburne, and Windom opposition. 
When the vote was analyzed it became apparent that 
the actual Blaine vote was fifty less than the vote for 
Grant, and that of the opposition vote about forty from 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and elsewhere were cast by 
Edmunds men. Brandagee, of Connecticut, followed the 
vote by a motion to lay the Henderson original motion 

28 



434 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

on the table, and the Blaine men were again signally- 
defeated in their ill-advised strategy by the success of 
Brandngee's movement, and an adjournment until ten 
o'clock to-morrow was then speedily carried." 

The third day's session opened at ten o'clock on 
the morning of the 4th of June. '•' Conkling struck out 
boldly when time was called in the morning, and he 
disconcerted Hale by his resolution declaring that all 
delegates should be bound to give a cordial support to 
the nominee of the convention. It was a resolution that 
Hale could not oppose, and yet he knew that all under- 
stood it as a public notice from the imperious Grant 
leader, that if Grant was beaten Blaine would share 
discomfiture with him. Conkling did it with the grand- 
est dramatic effect, and it gave inspiration to the Grant 
followers, while it chilled the whole Blaine army and 
exposed the weak point of the allies. The resolution 
prevailed without opposition, but Conkling demanded a 
call of the States and made the most out of his early 
spanking of Hale. Three West Virginia Sherman men 
voted against the resolution, and Conkling at once swung 
the party lash to stripe them before the multitude, but 
after a rambling debate of an issue he withdrew his 
whip and let the dissenters pursue their go-as-^^ou-please 
plan. 

" Finally the committee on credentials reported, and 
the changes made in the Pennsylvania cases were the 
strongest evidence of the loss of vim and leadership in 
the Blaine men. They had reconsidered the Lancaster 
case and lost two votes, and the Pollock-Campion and 
the Brown-Buch cases had been allowed to remain as 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 435 

the Grant men had fixed them. Night before last the 
Blaine committee started out to decide all doubtful 
cases, if not all cases, in their own favor, and the Grant 
men ruefully prepared for such a fiite ; but a day was 
lost to Blaine when the tide was at its flood, and the 
tide ebbed before Blaine has come to victory, as could 
have been done by anything like skilful management. 
A general relaxation and shuffling off followed, and even 
the Blaine credentials committee gave Grant four votes 
in Pennsylvania which they could have retained on 
plausible grounds in two cases, and in obedience to the 
mandate of the Lancaster Republicans in the other two 
cases. It is not surprising, therefore, that the proceed- 
ings of to-day exhibited only a succession of irritating 
skirmish attacks from the Grant managers and little or 
no manly resistance from the Blaine side. 

"After Conkling had played with the Blaine men 
until he wearied of it Logan scored a brilliant triumph 
over the credentials committee on an appeal to the con- 
vention. A protest had been sent to the committee by 
some Illinois outsiders, alleging that the Springfield con- 
vention was not a regular body, and that there were no 
properly elected delegates-at-large from the State. The 
committee received the protest, unanimously decided 
against it, and reported that the Logan delegates were 
entitled to their seats. Logan resented the mere refer- 
ence to his right to his place by the committee as a 
wanton imputation upon it when he had no contestant, 
and General Sharpe followed with a motion to expunge 
all reference to the delegates-at-large from the report. 
The Blaine leaders fought shy of the issue. Hale and 



436 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Frye were silent, but their delegation did a good .share 
of applause when opportunity for it offered. The allies 
were distrustful of their power, and they did not venture 
to get into line of battle. The result was that Logan 
bore off his laurels in triumph. 

" Altogether the session was a succession of defiant 
advances against the Blaine outposts, and when adjourn- 
ment was reached the Grant men were victors in all the 
skirmishes of the day. 

" The evening session brought the factious belligerents 
face to face on the question of contested seats, and Gen- 
eral Harrison voiced the impatience of delegates and au- 
ditors by proposing to limit debate to forty minutes in 
each case. With little preliminary spatting the conven- 
tion got down to work, taking up the Alabama contest. 
The Grant men were at a disadvantage that they well ap- 
preciated, as they were compelled to break their line or 
array themselves against the popular principle of direct 
representation of the people through the district, but they 
proved their perfect discipline by standing up squarely 
to the rack and accepting the issue. They knew that 
they must lose some, as one of the Grant delegates from 
Alabama made an earnest appeal in favor of the rights of 
districts, and Vermont could not be held on such a test. 
The debate was weak on the minority side, as Conkling, 
Logan, and the Grant dictators left the hopeless battle 
to their Southern friends, while Conger, Bateman, and 
other Blaine and Sherman orators, defended their cause 
on the floor. Three broke in Alabama, six of the Ver- 
mont men joined the allies, and there were straggling 
losses in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina ; but the 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 4o< 

Grant column stood up 306 strong on the severest test 
that could be imposed, while the allies polled 449. By 
this decision the Grant men lose two votes in Alabama, 
and they will next lose eighteen in Illinois and gain four 
in Kansas. When the contested seats shall all have 
been settled the nett loss to Grant will be eighteen, which 
will leave the Grant men an available vote of nearly 
three hundred that can be handled as a solid body. It 
will be solid for Grant, or for the man who may take the 
place of Grant all the time. 

" The Illinois case followed also, and it was the sig- 
nal for the giants to come to the front. Logan opened 
the fight, with his usual pluck, against the motion to limit 
debate to an hour. He blundered outside of the record, 
and made a telling Grant speech, calling out the strong- 
est eruption of enthusiasm for the ' old soldier ' that had 
yet been exhibited. He would have made a strong hit, 
but he unfortunately called out Haymond, of California, 
to answer a question, and the Golden Star orator deliv- 
ered a broadside for Blaine that enabled the Blaine gal- 
leries to outdo the Grant applause immensely. It was 
kept up for five minutes, all the Blaine delegates and 
a large majority of the galleries rising and joining in the 
successive thunders of applause. Logan faced it grace- 
fully like a man, but his speech was love's labor lost. 
He gained his point, however, by gaining two hours for 
the description of the Illinois case, besides his own speech 
of a full half hour. 

" The debate on the Illinois factions was opened by 
Conger, chairman of the credentials committee, in defence 
of the report and in favor of unseating eighteen Grant 



438 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

delegates. His speech was much the same as a half 
dozen others he had delivered during the day, and the 
vast audioDce sympathized with the convention in its 
weariness of that speech of Conger's. Raum, one of the 
sitting delegates, followed and threw much life into the 
dry details he gave of Republican precedents, but An- 
thony, a contestant, answered with equal ability, and he 
moulded Republican history in just the opposite way. 
Storrs followed in defence of the Grant delegates, and 
made some strong points, but he spoke with that heavi- 
ness that is common when a man faces palpable and in- 
evitable defeat until he accidentally struck the Blaine 
chord, by saying in a conciliatory tone, ' Nominate James 
G. Blaine, if you will,' when the Blaine galleries broke 
out in a tempest of applause that was kept up for sev- 
eral minutes. He waited patiently until order was re- 
stored, when he countered with a beautiful tribute to the 
old soldier, and the Grant men simultaneously rose and 
stormed the convention with deafening applause for fully 
fifteen minutes. ^Long John' Wentworth threw up his 
hat, Conkling and Tom Murphy answered from New 
York, and the excitement was soon brought to such a 
pitch that hats, handkerchiefs, and umbrellas were sent 
flying in the air. Some of the colored delegates jerked 
off their coats and whirled them around in the most 
frantic manner. In noise, earnestness, and endurance it 
threw all previous Blaine demonstrations in the shade, 
and clearly outlined the unconquerable determination -^ of 
the Grant followers. When the storm was just begin- 
ning to calm a little, the Alabama delegation struck up 
the song of ' Marching through Georgia,' and the galleries 



CHICAGO CON\TENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 439 

took up the refrain. Hoar looked on complacently and 
waited patiently for the volcano to quiet itself, but just 
when things seemed likely to settle the Blaine men 
started in fresh, and as they had two-thirds of the gal- 
leries they shouted and cheered louder than their oppo- 
nents, and kept it up quite as long. The ten thousand 
people present, who had been weary or worn out by te- 
dious debate, were easily fired by one side or the other. 
A perfect pandemonium followed, and it was a full hour 
before the yelling ceased from sheer exhaustion. The 
riotous applause lasted a full hour, each side cheering in 
turn. 

" When the convention finally settled down the Presi- 
dent attempted to put the question, but the only response 
was a fresh confusion of cheers for Blaine and Grant. 
Raum at last diverted the shouters by proposing three 
cheers for the nominee of the convention, which were 
given with a will. Storrs then attempted to proceed, but 
he incidentally named Sherman, and the Sherman men 
took a brief tilt at applause, but it was feeble and soon 
wore itself out. He then finished his speech at a quar- 
ter to one. 

" Pixley, of California, followed with a brief speech 
that somewhat sobered the convention. He character- 
ized the demonstrations as worthy only of France and the 
Commune. Butterworth moved to adjourn until ten 
o'clock and demanded a call of the roll. It was finished 
at 1.10 A. M., and the adjournment was defeated by the 
overwhelming vote of 653 to 103. 

" The vote was then about to be taken on the Illinois 
contest, when Clayton of Arkansas, moved to substitute 



440 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the minority report relating to the First Congressional 
district, and a call of the roll was ordered, resulting in the 
defeat of the amendment by 387 to 353. Many of the 
delegations had one or more absentees, worn out by the 
protracted session and exhausting cheering, and Kansas 
declined to vote. As the Blaine sauce for Illinois throws 
out four Blaine men in that State, the result was received 
with vociferous applause from the Grant men, as it nearly 
annihilated the allied majority. Sixteen in Ohio broke, 
which is regarded as the Grant strength there as against 
Blaine. The question then recurred on the original re- 
port, seating the contesting anti-Grant delegates from 
the first district of Illinois, and Logan demanded the call 
of the roll. It was concluded at 1.45 a. m., and the ma- 
jority report was adopted by 384 to 356. Pennsylvania 
voted 34 on the Logan side and 24 against it. Logan 
then called a division of the question on the eight dis- 
tricts, but the variance was not material from the test 
vote in the first district. The eighteen anti-Grant men 
were certain of being seated, and as they were admitted 
they swelled the sadly cut down aUied majority. A 
motion to adjourn to eleven o'clock on Satui'day was 
carried at half-past two. 

" President Hoar did not call the convention to order 
on the morning of the fourth day, June 5th, until a quar- 
ter before twelve o'clock. The Kansas contest was the 
first business and it was an embarrassing issue to both 
sides. The Blaine-Shernian men were compelled to vote 
out four of their men and give their seats to Grant men 
to justify their action in the Illinois case, and the Grant 
men had to vote against the admission of their own 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 441 

friends to maintain their consistency. The Blaine-Sher- 
man men preserved their intention and voted out their 
own men, but some of the fierce Grant men stood obsti- 
nately to their guns and voted against the addition of, 
four to their number. Logan rose and, in dramatic 
style, cast the votes of his Illinois followers against his 
friends. The overwhelming vote of 476 to 184 showed, 
however, that separate district representation is hence- 
forth to be the accepted law of the party. The next 
question brought about a sudden change of partners in 
the national waltz. Two Sherman men contested the 
seats of the Blaine delegates from West Virginia, and the 
Sherman men were thrown into an alliance with Grant as 
if by magic. The cut came from Massachusetts, and the 
Blaine leaders saw that an unexpected and serious danger 
threatened them. They threw out their flanks to stay 
the union between the Sherman and Grant forces, but it 
was Grouchy after Blucher over again. The Sherman 
men filed in with the Grant army, and Blaine was com- 
pelled for the first time to face the field alone, as Grant 
had to meet it in several previous conflicts. An active 
rally was made along the Blaine lines, but the vote of 
every divided delegation proved that many who were 
bitterly against Grant w^ere as bitterly against Blaine, 
and the ballot footed up 417 for the new Grant-Sherman 
combination and 312 against. 

" This was the first show of the positive Blaine 
strength, and it presented a majority of 84 against him, 
but it also showed that Blaine had more positive strength 
than Grant in the convention. The next test vote was 
yet a more severe trial for Blaine. The Utah contest 



442 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

was between the Grant contestants and the Blaine sitting 
members, and, to the surprise of the Blaine leaders, 
Massachusetts again gave the hint to the convention that 
the field would again combine against Blaine. The issue 
seemed to be extremely perilous to Blaine, but they had 
no way to escape. They had no chance for retreat and 
none for victory, and they had to stand up as bravely 
as possible and receive the shock. The prestige of the 
West Virginia vote was with the field, against Blaine, 
and it had its effect, as was shown by the increased anti- 
Blaine vote. The Grant-Sherman combination increased 
its vote for the admission of the square Grant delegates 
to the seats of two square Blaine delegates from 417 
on the West Virginia to 426 on the Utah nine, and the 
Blaine vote was reduced from 330 to 312. These votes 
indicated a rapid crystallization of the field against 
Blaine, and the Blaine leaders would have floundered in- 
definitely had not the Grant leaders reinspired them by 
forcing their battle too fast and too far. When General 
Garfield moved the adoption of the report on rules. Gen- 
eral Sharpe, one of the staunchest and ablest of the Grant 
managers, threw the Blaine men into consternation by 
moving to proceed at once to the general nomination of 
candidates for President. Sharpe made his motion de- 
liberately, and he evidently had a two-fold purpose in 
offering it. He hoped that the new Sherman allies would 
stand by the Grant men in forcing the fight and thus de- 
moralize the Blaine lines, or, failing in that, he desired to 
demonstrate the exact strength of Grant against both 
Blaine and Sherman and the necessity of uniting on a 
candidate against Blaine. 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 443 

" General Garfield at once met; General Sharpe with 
an order for his allies to fall back into the Blaine camp 
again, and that gave notice that the scenes were suddenly 
shifted and that the Blaine-Sherman combination would 
at once resume business. When a roll-call was demanded 
there was a general bustle among the delegations, and all 
stragglers were hastily summoned into line. The result 
proved that Grant had 276 votes against the field and 
that the field had 479 against Grant. The result was 
received with a storm of applause from the well-crowded 
Blaine galleries, and the Blaine leaders were again re- 
stored to the command of the convention by the bold 
movement of General Sharpe. It was not a distinct 
Blaine victory ; but it was a decisive Grant defeat, and 
it was accepted as a formal judgment that Grant was out- 
side the pule of success. The Blaine men were timid not- 
withstanding their substantial recovery from the disaster 
suffered in the West Virginia and Utah cases, and they 
feared to press the struggle. Both sides considered Pierre- 
pont's platform leisurely, as if each was afraid to precipi- 
tate the great battle, and when the tedious resolutions 
had jogged through a sluggish debate on civil service re- 
form, with nobody exhibiting any disposition to hasten 
results, the Blaine men were afraid to go on and afraid to 
move to adjourn. Ex-Postmtister General Creswell came 
to tho relief of both sides at 4.50 p. m., by a motion to ad- 
journ until seven o'clock. All the preliminary work was 
out of the way, and the convention had to face a direct 
struggle on the nomination or adjourn. A few feeble 
noes were given on the question, but nobody demanded 
a roll-call, and the three jarring elements of the conven- 



444 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

tion rushed out to see whicli could best plot and counter- 
plot to destroy the others. 

" The probability that the final struggle was at hand 
attracted an eager crowd to the evening session. The 
galleries were jammed before the hour of meeting, and 
every place that would allow of a man to be crowded into 
it was occupied before President Hoar's gavel fell. The 
scene was the most brilliant of all the many brilliant ex- 
hibitions given in the great hall during the last four days. 
There were no laggards among the delegates and the com- 
manders were at their posts on sharp time. The ladies 
largely increased their numbers among the spectators, and 
on every side the most intense interest was manifested. 
The Blaine men were hopeful, but they did not conceal 
their apprehensions that their bitter battle against Grant 
might recoil upon them fearfully to-night. It has been 
clear since early in the day that the contest would be be- 
tween Blaine and the field, and in every preliminary trial 
the field had won, but the Blaine men feel confident that 
they can command a clear majority against any one man. 
Such were the hopes and expectations of the Blaine 
leaders when seven o'clock summoned them to the final 
grapple with their foes. The Grant men came into ac- 
tion with little or no hope of success for their fiivorite, 
but they have taken their last stand to make Blaine share 
their defeat. Both the Sherman and Grant managers feel 
that delay will be in their favor. They do not want to 
betray their position by forcing an adjournment over till 
Monday, but their policy will be to protract the ballots 
and wear out the night session. Such was the attitude of 
the belligerents when the convention opened this evening. 



CHICAGO CONVENTION— NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 445 

" Hale, the chief Blaine leader, took the floor as soon 
as the convention was ready for business, and there was 
a sudden hush, followed by applause as soon as he was 
recognized. It was regarded as the signal for a deter- 
mined advance of the Blaine men, but the disappointment 
was general among his followers when he made what was, 
under the circumstances, a dilatory motion. With two 
hours certain to be occupied in speeches presenting can- 
didates, not more than two hours would remain for ballot- 
ing, as the advent of Sunday will adjourn the body at 
twelve. It was accepted by all sides as indicating hesi- 
tation on the part of the Blaine chieftains. When the 
name of Cameron was reported as the unanimous choice 
of Pennsylvania for the national committee, he received 
his first hearty cheers from the galleries. 

" Both Illinois and Maine made no response when 
called to nominate a candidate for President, but when 
Michigan was called, Mr. Joy at once rose and nominated 
Blaine. 

" After some desultory sparring over the national 
committee had been lazily disposed of there was nothing 
left but to go to Presidential nominations, and Hale was 
compelled to lead oif because the others would not and 
could afford to wait. He finally rose and moved the 
call of the States for general nominations for President. 
When Illinois was called, being the first State in alpha- 
betical order that has candidates, there was no response, 
and like silence followed the call of Maine, but when 
Michigan was called, Mr. Joy rose to nominate Blaine. 
It was one of the many blunders of the Blaine leaders, as 
his speech was dry, uninspiring, and never elicited a cheer. 



446 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

except twice when he named "Blaine. Long-continued 
cheers followed, and at one time a repetition of the last 
night yelling blockade was apprehended. Colonel Pixley, 
of California, seconded the nomination. He improved on 
Joy, but fell far short of the expectations of the Blaine 
people. Indeed, so indifferently had Blaine been advo- 
cated, that Frye, had to come forward and ask to be heard 
by a suspension of the rules. It was granted, of course, 
and he gave the Blaine men a taste of what they wanted. 
His five-minute speech was grand, bold, and eloquent, and 
Blaine was redeemed. When Minnesota was called, Mr. 
Drake, of Minnesota, came forward and named Windom, 
but it was a failure. He did not fill his ten minutes, and 
the audience gave him a few parting cheers. 

"New York was soon called, and Conkling rose and 
quickly stepped upon the platform. It was the signal 
for thunders of applause. With difficulty silence was 
finally restored, and the vast gathering suddenly hushed 
into perfect stillness. Conscious that his cause was a 
hopeless one, he spoke with all the inspiration of one 
who was about to gather the garland of victory. He 
was sublimely eloquent. His polished blows at Blaine 
were as terrible as they were elegant, and his epigram- 
matic tributes to Grant exhausted the power of language. 
Nearly every sentence was interrupted by an ovation. 
When he said that Grant had no appliances and no tele- 
graph running from his house to this convention the 
Blaine galleries sent up a flood of hisses and jeers and 
calls for ^ time,' as he had exceeded his ten minutes. 
For some time the galleries would not allow him to be 
heard, but he stood calmly, with folded arms, until the 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 447 

opposition exhausted itself. Then he said, as only Oonk- 
ling could say it, ' Go on, if you will ; it doesn't come 
out of my time.' It then occurred to the Blaine fol- 
lowers, cA^en in the galleries, that the night was passing, 
and that they were themselves aiding to postpone a 
nomination until Monday. He was then allowed to 
finish, and he retired amid a tempest of cheers. The 
speech was equal to Ingersoll's speech for Blaine in 
1876 in eloquence and power. 

" It was fully twenty minutes after Conkling left the 
platform before order could be restored. The Grant 
men in convention and galleries took a regular jubilee, 
and President Hoar had to sit down and let disorder 
tire itself out. The Grant delegation * pooled ' the flags 
which mark their States, marched around the aisles, 
cheering and yelling as if bedlam had broken loose. 
Finally, Bradley, of Kentucky, was allowed to speak, 
seconding the nomination of Grant ; but it was tame after 
Conkling. 

" Garfield next rose and the audience started a new 
storm of applause. As soon as he could be heard he 
nominated Sherman and delivered an eloquent and im- 
pressive appeal for his candidate, but neither galleries 
nor convention had half as much applause for Sherman 
as they had for Garfield himself" 

The following is the full text of General Garfield's 
speech : 

" Mr. President : I have witnessed the extraordi- 
nary scenes of this convention with deep solicitude. 
No emotion touches my heart more quickly than a sen- 
timent in honor of a great and noble character. But 



448 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

as I sat on these seats and witnessed these demonstra- 
tions, it seemed to me you were a human ocean in a 
tempest. I have seen the sea kshed into fury and 
tossed into a spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of 
the dullest man. But I remember that it is not the 
billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all 
heights and depths are measured. When the storm has 
passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when 
sunshine bathes its smooth surface, then the astronomer 
and surveyor takes the level from which he measures all 
terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the con- 
vention, your present temper may not mark the health- 
ful pulse of the people. 

" When our enthusiasm has passed, when the emo- 
tions of this hour have subsided, we shall find the calm 
level of public opinion, below the storm, from which 
the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, 
and by which their final action will be determined. 
Not here, in this brilliant circle, where 15,000 men and 
women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republic to 
be decreed ; not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces 
of 756 delegates waiting to cast their votes into the 
urn and determine the choice of their party; but by 
5,000,000 Republican firesides, where the thoughtful 
fathers, with wives and children about them, with the 
calm thoughts inspired by love of home and love of 
country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the 
future, and the knowledge of the great men who have 
n domed and blessed our nation in days gone by, — there 
God prepares the verdict that shall determine the wis- 
dom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 449 

of June, but in the sober quiet that comes between now 
and November, in the silence of deliberate judgment, 
will this great question be settled. Let us aid them 
to-night. 

" But now, gentlemen of the convention, what do 
we want ? Bear with me a moment. Hear me for this 
cause, and, for a moment, be silent that you may hear. 
Twenty-five years ago this Republic was wearing a 
triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with the 
traffic in the body and souls of men had paralyzed the 
consciences of a majority of our people. The baleful 
doctrine of State sovereignty had shocked and weak- 
ened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the 
national government, and the grasping power of slavery 
was seizing the virgin Territories of the West and drag- 
ging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that 
crisis the Republican party was born. It drew its first 
inspiration from the fire of liberty which God has lighted 
in every man's heart, and which all the powers of ig- 
norance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The 
Republican party came to deliver and save the Repub- 
lic. It entered the arena when the beleaguered and as- 
sailed Territories were struggling for freedom, and drew 
around them the sacred circle of liberty, which the 
demon of slavery has never dared to cross. It made 
them free forever. 

" Strengthened by its victory on the frontier, the 
young party, under the leadership of that great man, 
who on this spot, twenty years ago, was made its leader, 
entered the national capital and assumed the high duties 
of the Government. The light which shone from its 

29 



450 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

banner dispelled the darkness in which sLi very had en- 
shrouded the Capitol and melted the shackles of every 
slave, and consumed, in the fire of liberty, every slave- 
pen within the shadow of the Capitol. Our national 
industries, by an impoverishing policy, were themselves 
prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such 
feeble currents that the treasury itself was well nigh 
empty. The money of the people was the wretched 
notes of 2,000 uncontrolled and irresponsible State bank 
corporations, which were filling the country with a cir- 
culation that poisoned rather than sustained the life of 
business. 

" The Republican party changed all this. It abol- 
ished the babel of confusion and gave the country a cur- 
renc}^ as national as its flag, based upon the sacred faith 
of the people. It threw its protecting arm around our 
great industries, and they stood erect as with new life. 
It filled with the spirit of true nationality all the great 
functions of the Government. It confronted a rebellion 
of unexampled magnitude, with a slavery behind it, and, 
under God, fought the final battle of liberty until victory 
was won. Then, after the storms of battle, were heard 
the i^weet, calm words of peace uttered by the conquer- 
ing nation, and saying to the conquered foe that lay pros- 
trate at its feet, ' This is our only revenge, that you join 
us in lifting to the serene firmament of the Constitution, 
to shine like stars forever and forever, the immortal prin- 
ciples of truth and justice, that all men, white or black, 
shall be free and stand equal before the law.' Then came 
the questions of reconstruction, the public debt, and the 
public faith. 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 451 

" In the settlement of these questions the Republican 
party has completed its twenty-five years of glorious ex- 
istence, and it has sent us here to prepare it for another 
lustrum of duty and of victory. How shall we do this 
great work ? We cannot do it, my friends, by assailing 
our Republican brethren. God forbid that I should say 
one word to cast a shadow upon any name on the roll of 
our heroes. This coming fight is our Thermopylse. We 
are standing upon a narrow isthmus. If our Spartan 
liosts are united we can withstand all the Persians that 
the Xerxes of Democracy can bring against us. 

"Let us hold our ground this one year,. for the stars 
in their courses fight for us in the future. The census to 
be taken this year will bring re-enforcements and con- 
tinued power. But, in order to win this victory now, we 
want the vote of every Republican, of every Grant Re- 
publican in America, of every Blaine man and every anti- 
Blaine man. The vote of every follower of every candi- 
date is needed to make our success certain ; therefore I 
say, gentlemen and brethren, we are here to calmly coun- 
sel together, and inquire what we shall do. [A voice : 
* Nominate Garfield.' — Great applause.] 

" We want a man whose life and opinions embody all 
the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a 
man who, standing on a mountain height, sees all the 
achievements of our past history, and carries in his heart 
the memory of all its glorious deeds, and who, looking 
forward, prepares to meet the labor and the dangers to 
come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkind- 
ness toward those we lately met in battle. The Repub- 
lican party ofiers to our brethren of the South the olive 



452 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

branch of peace, and wishes them to return to brother- 
hood, on this supreme condition, that it shall be admitted, 
forever and for evermore, that, in the war for the Union, 
we were right and they were wrong. [Cheers.] On 
that supreme condition we meet them as brethren, and 
no other. AVe ask them to share with us the blessings 
and honors of this great R-epublic. 

" Now, gentlemen, not to weary you, I am about to 
present a name for your consideration — the name of a 
man who was the comrade, and associate, and friend of 
nearly all those noble dead whose faces look down upon 
us from these walls to-night [cheers] ; a man who began 
his career of public service twenty-five years ago, whose 
first duty was courageously done in the days of peril on 
the plains of Kansas, when the first red drops of that 
bloody shower began to fall which finally swelled into 
the deluge of war. He bravely stood by young Kansas 
then, and, returning to his duty in the national legisla- 
ture, through all subsequent time his pathway has been 
marked by labors performed in every department of legis- 
lation. 

" You ask for his monuments. I point you to twenty- 
five years of the national statutes. Not one great benefi- 
cent statute has been placed on our statute books with- 
out his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided these men 
to formulate the laws that raised our great armies and 
carried us through the war. His hand was seen in the 
workmanship of those statutes that restored and brought 
back the unity and married calm of the States. His 
hand was in all that great legislation that created the war 
currency, and in a greater work that redeemed the prom- 



CHICAGO CONVENTION — NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 453 

ises of the Government, and made the -currency equal to 
gold. And when, at last, called from the halls of legisla- 
tion into a high executive office, he displayed that expe- 
rience, intelligence, firmness, and poise of character which 
has carried us through a stormy period of three years. 
With one half the public press crying ^ Crucify him ! ' and 
a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success — in all this 
he remained unmoved until victory crowned him. 

" The great fiscal affairs of the nation and the great 
business interests of the country he has guarded and pre- 
served, while executing the law of resumption, and effect- 
ing its object, without a jar, and against the false prophe- 
cies of one half of the press and all the Democracy of 
this continent. He has shown himself able to meet with 
calmness the great emergencies of the Government for 
twenty-five years. He has trodden the perilous heights 
of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has 
borne his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of 
" that fierce light that beats against the throne," but its 
fiercest ray has found no flaw in his armor, no stain on 
his shield. 

" I do not present him as a better Republican, or as 
a better man than thousands of others we honor, but I 
present him for your deliberate consideration. I nomi- 
nate John Sherman, of Ohio." 

" Elliot, the colored orator of South Carolina, varied 
the monotony of the generally indifferent speeches nomi- 
nating candidates by an eloquent and well-delivered ap- 
peal for Sherman, and ex-Governor Smith, of Vermont, 
then started the Edmunds, boom, which was seconded by 
Sandford, of Massachusetts. The convention and the 



454 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

galleries were both wearied of the oratory and fireworks, 
and repeated manifestations of impatience were given. 
As soon as it became probable that a ballot must go over 
till Monday, the interest of the vast audience visibly 
flagged, and empty seats became visible as crowds rushed 
to escape the heat of the hall. At 11.30, Cassidy, of 
Wisconsin, rose to nominate Washburne, but Conkling, 
Frye, and Garfield had made all ordinary speeches stale 
and unprofitable, and neither Cassidy nor his theme in- 
spired enthusiasm. 

" Brandagee, of Connecticut, infused fresh spirit into 
the jaded audience by a sprightly, eloquent seconding of 
Washburne. He closed at 11.50 p. m., leaving Sunday 
but ten minutes off. The nominations were then finished, 
and a motion to adjourn until ten o'clock on Monday was 
carried just as the midnight hour was struck." 

When the doors of the convention were opened on 
the morning of Monday, June 7th, " hurried streams of 
humanity poured in at every entrance, and when the houi 
arrived for President Hoar to swing his gavel, all the por- 
tions of the hall within possible hearing of the proceed- 
ings were jammed to the uttermost. Even the reserved 
platform of the correspondents was invaded by the crowd 
until communication with the hundred batteries which 
maintained their ceaseless clicking hard by was almost 
entirely interrupted. The ladies gave their wealth of 
smiles upon the conflict of the political giants in greater 
profusion than at any previous session, and the distin- 
guished guests were wedged in upon each other as if 
they were no more than common flesh and blood. 

" Hoar came in ahead of time and looked serene as a 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 455 

summer morning that welcomed him to his task, and his 
face was fresh as the roses which shed their exquisite 
tints and fragrance on his table. He has borne himself 
so well, so impartially, and so intelligently, that all felt 
assured of a faithful umpire in the desperation of the last 
charge of the contending hosts. Alabama, as usual, wms 
first to present a full delegation, and Arkansas, just be- 
hind her, speedily followed. The colored troops were 
generally among the first to the front, and they evidently 
meant to fight nobly. Conkling was mindful of the po- 
tency of dramatic strategy, and knew that he would meet 
his grandest welcome as he passed before his allies to 
lead them in the hand-to-hand struggle. He waited until 
just before the time for calling to order, and then strode 
into the hall with that magnificent bearing that none of 
his rivals can imitate. As soon as his tall form and sil- 
vered crown were visible, the shout went up that all un- 
derstood, and it was heartier and longer than before.* He 
walked down the aisle with the utmost exposure, and 
gracefully bowed his recognition of the liomMge tendered 
him. Garfield is the member of the convention who di- 
vides with Conkling the popular welcome at every open- 
ing. He has evidently studied the graces for such occa- 
sions less, and therefore appears to have studied them 
more ; while Conkling is either so complete in his culture 
or so gifted in the perfection of manner, that he seems to 
be a born leader and grandly conscious of it. Conkling's 
dress has the appearance of the most elegant negligence, 
while Garfield comes with his carefully adjusted tie and 
collar, closely buttoned frock-coat and displaying a gen- 
teel mixture of mirror poses and Western go-as-you-please. 



456 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" He received a royal welcome when he entered, and 
his strong, rugged features lightened like the rippled lake 
with its dancing sunshine. Cameron was active, silent 
and determined as ever. He flitted hurriedly among 
the distinguished guests, before the signal gun was fired, 
and then retired to his immediate command. Hale and 
Frye were among the first to take their position, and 
hope and fear were plainly wrestling with each other on 
their faces. Hale was pale with anxiety, and the usu- 
ally flushed features of Frye were redder than are their 
wont. Both seemed well poised and reasonably self- 
reliant, but the contrast between their nervous apprehen- 
sions and the calm definnce of Conkling was a study for 
the intelligent observers of men. Chandler was rest- 
less, and his little face seemed to have shrunk away 
behind his eye-glasses. 

" Logan was calm as the dark cloud that is just 
waiting to hurl its thunderbolt. He sat as still as a 
statue, his swarthy features appearing darker than usual, 
and his fierce black eyes now and then darting out their 
most defiant flashes. He seemed conscious that his 
leader was beaten, but he was evidently resolved that 
there should be a costly retreat for the pursuing hosts. 
Garfield, Foster, Dennison, Bateman, Butterfield, and 
other Ohio leaders, were to be seen in little knots of their 
delegation, as if they feared defection at an early stage 
of the contest, and there was evident unrest among the 
Indiana men. General Harrison's short form and sharply- 
cut features were shaded with anxiety. He feared Grant, 
and now that Grant seemed to be beaten, he Avas im- 
pressed with the possibility of the grandson of a Presi- 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 457 

dent being the choice of exhausted factions. General 
Sewell sat in front of Conkling, and his youthful face 
exhibited the coolness and determination which charac- 
terized him in the heat of battle. As far as faces could 
be distinguished in the great arena, all seemed to be 
soberly anxious for the order to advance. 

" When President Hoar called the convention to order, 
there was a speedy hush, and the vast multitude was 
seated with wonderful alacrity. All seemed anxious for 
the fight to begin. The minister who opened with 
prayer shared the general appreciation of the value of 
the fleeting moments, and his petition had the merit of 
brevity. President Hoar at once called the combatants 
to the arena, and gave notice that there should be no 
delay, no debate, no tricks by changing votes after once 
cast ; and ^e faithfully enforced the rules. Hale came 
promptly to the front by moving to proceed to a ballot. 
His manner was courageous, and the Blaine men sent 
up a cheer to encourage him. Conkling followed, and 
seconded the motion with an air that plainly told his 
followers he was ready for the fray, and the Grant gal- 
leries welcomed him with a storm of applause. The 
roU-call was at once begun amidst most intense anx- 
iety, many of the leaders exhibiting painful suspense. 

" Alabama opened for Grant by giving him nearly a 
solid vote, and Arkansas followed with an entirely solid 
vote for him. There was faint applause, but all sides 
joined in hissing it down. Next came California with a 
united vote for Blaine, which was announced by Pixley 
in a dramatic way and with a clap-trap sentence for the 
galleries, but the president rose and notified the chairmen 



458 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

of delegations that no comment of any kind would be 
allowed. The ballot then ran along in a regulation way 
until Connecticut was called, when there was breathless 
silence to hear the response, and when it gave Blaine 
but three and Grant none, there was a double disap- 
pointment. The next State that excited special attention 
was New York, and when Conkling rose to announce the 
vote, every one strained forward to catch his words. In 
a distinct voice he slowly responded : ' Two votes are 
reported for Sherman, seventeen for Blaine, and fifty-one 
are for Grant.' His emphasis upon the words, ' are for 
Grant,' was an exhibition of Conkling's own method of 
impressing himself upon those around him, and but for 
the common desire to prefer a vote to a hurrah there 
would have been a storm of cheers. Ohio threw a wet 
bhmket on the Sherman men by casting nine votes for 
Blaine on the first ballot, and it brightened the faces of 
a vast majority of the spectators. Pennsylvania was 
another of the States that silenced the audience when 
called, as she was about to declare how Cameron had 
held the Grant lines there against the impetuous dashes 
made by the Blaine men. There was evident gratifica- 
tion among the Grant followers and equal disappointment 
among the Blaine men when General Beaver's clear, 
strong voice thundered out so that all could hear it: 
* Pennsylvania votes tliirty-two for Grant, twenty-three 
for Blaine, and three for Sherman.' There was little 
variation from the generally understood attitudes of the 
States called after Pennsylvania, and the ballot closed 
in the most orderly manner. 

"When the secretary announced that Grant had 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 459 

reached 304; Blaine, 284; Sherman, 93 ; Edmunds, 34; 
Washburne, 30, and Windom 10, there was a spontane- 
ous shout from the Grant ranks, and the Blaine leaders 
and followers were grievously mortified. Hale and Frye 
could not conceal their apprehensions that they had mis- 
calculated their strength, and that the defeat of their 
plumed knight was more than probable. They had con- 
fidently counted on from 305 to 315 for Blaine on the 
first ballot, and they conceded only 275 to Grant. But 
the battle was upon them; there was no time allowed to 
rally or gather up stragglers, and they had to push the 
fight as best they could with the prestige, on which many 
hesitating votes depended, clearly against them. The 
Grant galleries seemed to take in the situation, and to 
understand that rapid voting rather than boisterous 
cheering was their policy. The moment the vote was 
announced by President Hoar he ordered another ballot, 
holding that nothing was in order but to vote; and before 
the leaders could take a look at their lines they were in 
action again by the prompt roll-call. The Blaine men 
noted the second ballot with painful interest, as they 
hoped to receive a large accession to their candidate, and 
when the result showed that Grant had gained one and 
that Bhiine had lost two there was a visible chill through- 
out the Blaine ranks. The third ballot was precipitated 
upon the convention immediately after the second had 
been announced, and the Blaine men hoped that Ohio or 
Pennsylvania would signal the doubtful vote to come to 
the popular leader; but Ohio exhibited no variation, even 
with Sherman's own delegation divided, and Pennsylvania 
announced a gain to Grant at the cost of Blaine. 



460 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" It was on this ballot that Caleb N. Taylor, of Bucks, 
started the Harrison boom solitary and alone, but during 
all the subsequent votes there was no response to it from 
Indiana. The announcement of 305 for Grant and 282 
for Blaine settled all sides down to a wearing contest, 
and it so continued until sixteen ballots had been cast, 
without any material change in the lines. So closely was 
the voting watched that every change of a single vote 
was understood at once, and the gain or loss of two or 
three votes by either Grant or Blaine was the signal for 
applause when the ballot was closed. During the sixteen 
ballots Grant carried only from 303 to 309 and Blaine 
from 280 to 285. The only episode that interfered to re- 
lieve the monotony of the sameness of voting was when 
Conkling lost a vote in his delegation. He did not dis- 
pute the correctness of the vote returned to him as chair- 
man, but he evidently meant that deserters must uncover 
themselves. He demanded a call of the roll in open con- 
vention, which required each individual delegate to rise 
and answer for himself, and Senator McCarthy proved to 
be the missing Grant man w^ho had taken refuge in the 
Blaine camp. He was vociferously cheered by the gal- 
leries when he cast his vote, but Conkling looked on com- 
placently and felt assured that he had stopped further 
straggling. After the sixth ballot General Harrison rose 
and moved a recess until 5 p. m., but it was howled down 
before the question could be put. Later on Drake tried to 
stop what seemed to be a tedious farce by renewing the 
motion to adjourn, but he ftired no better than Harrison. 
After eighteen ballots, and when more than five hours 
had been consumed in casting and counting 755 votes, 



CHICAGO CONVENTION — NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 461 

almost without variation, Mr. Buchanan, the Sherman 
chairman of the Mississippi delegation, moved a recess 
until seven o'clock, and it was carried without serious 
opposition. Both the Grant and Blaine leaders are seek- 
ing alliances with Sherman, and when a Sherman manager 
proposed a truce, the chief opposing forces were unwilling 
to antagonize him. An adjournment was then hurriedly 
carried and the weary crowd filed out to dinner. 

" The brief recess was actively employed by leaders 
of all sides to get possession of the incalculable quantity 
from the South that followed Sherman. It is known to 
be made up largely of Swiss guards, and so both leading 
lines feared that the other might capture them. Both 
have tried most exclusively to get them into camp, and 
the air is full of stories not at all creditable to the integ- 
rity of either bidders or the doubtful delegates. 

" When the hour for the evening session drew near 
there was no reliable understanding between the Sherman 
wing and either of the chief belligerents, and both Hale 
and Conkling had to renew the battle and take the 
chances of the many accidents which may drift the float- 
ing vote to its final destination. As soon as the doors 
were open the crowd rushed in more impetuously than 
ever before, and for the first time the mob mastered the 
excellent police force that has so admirably handled the 
seething mass of humanity that has crowded in and about 
the Exposition Building. Those admitted to the distant 
portions of the hall finally made a dash over the feeble 
partitions and at once filled all the vacant seats nearest 
the platform. Once in possession it could not be re- 
moved, and those who were too late had to take seats 



462 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

which present a View of the convention only in the dim 
distance. Conkling and Garfield came in late, as usual, 
and received the regulation cheers, much to the amuse- 
ment of the audience generally, and Hale and Frye were 
early in their places, still hopeful but evidently not con- 
fident of victory. 

" President Hoar promptly ordered the nineteenth 
ballot, and the greatest anxiety was manifested as the 
States Avith floating delegates were called. It was ex- 
pected that the recess would result in some combination 
in favor of Blaine or Grant, but the ballot failed to reveal 
any material change, and when the next presented about 
the same result it became apparent that the battle was 
to be a protracted one. The ballots were hurried along 
without anything whatever to relieve the tedious same- 
ness of calling the roll and listening to announcements, 
which would average just about even all around in any 
ten ballots. Grant started at his old 305, but Blaine fell 
down to 279, and on next trial Grant forged ahead to 
308, leaving Blaine at 276. Grant then dropped gradu- 
ally until he got down to 303 and Blaine took a spurt 
that put him up to 281, but it was evident that the ups 
and downs between them meant nothing more than stray 
shots from wandering pickets. The crowded audience 
was restless. The Grant and Blaine men cheered alter- 
nately, as ballots were announced showing slight gains for 
their favorites. After the twenty-seventh ballot, at 9.30 
p. M., Morse, of Massachusetts, anti-Grant, moved to ad- 
journ till ten to-morrow. The viva voce was nearly equal, 
and the chair declared that the ayes appeared to have it ; 
but Conkling bounced to his feet to demand a call of the 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 463 



roll, which Hale promptly seconded. The motion was 
then withdrawn, and the session began again. 

" The twenty-eighth ballot gave Grant 307, within one 
of his highest vote, and Blaine 279, being below his aver- 
age. Mr. Morse, another Massachusetts Edmunds man, 
then renewed the motion to adjourn, and the chair was 
about to declare it carried when Conkling rose hastily 
and demanded a roll-call, which was promptly seconded 
by the Grant men of Kentucky. The Blaine men were 
sick of the unequal contest, and Hale, who had joined 
Conkling half an hour before to oppose adjournment, in 
order to exhibit pluck, sat still, and the field was quickly 
marshalled for a suspension of active hostilities." 

The following table shows the result of the day's bal- 
loting, the first ballot being given in detail ; 



States. 


< 

PS 

CD 


e4 

< 


< 


s 

'A 

P 

I 




p 
< 


Al&batua . . 


16 

12 

'6 

'8 

6 

24 

1 

"4 

20 

8 

'? 
3 


1 

13 

3 
6 

*8 

10 

2G 

22 

6 

1 

2 

14 

7 


3 

"s 

'2 

'3 
6 

'2 

2 


"2 
26 


• 

• 




Arkansas 




California 






7 


Delaware . . . ... 




Florida 




Geori^ia 




Illinois 


8 


ludiaua . . . 


1 


Iowa 




Kansas 












Maine . . . . 




Maryland 






1 






Carried forward 


115 


118 


26 


22 




17 



464 



JAME3 A. GARFIELD. 



States. 


-< 




z 

<; 
•s. 

I 


X 

Q 
z 

S 


s 
z 


z 
s 

X 

•< 




115 

1 

6 
29 

51 
6 

32 

is 

16 
11 

18 

1 
1 

"i 

1 

i 

1 
1 


118 
21 

'4 

6 

6 

10 

16 

17 

*9 

6 

23 

8 

6 
2 

3 

8 
7 
2 

1 
1 
2 
2 
2 
1 
1 
1 


26 

6 

2 

14 
34 

3 

i 
1 

2 

'i 

3 


22 

"i 

'i 
io 


10 

•• 


17 


Michio^n 




Minnesota 




Mississippi 




Missoari 




Nebraska 

Nevada 








yew Jersey 

yew York 








Ohio 




Oregon 

Pennsylvania 




Ehode Island 




Soath Carolina 




Tennessee 




Texas 




Vermont 








Wisconsin .... 




Arizona . 




Dakota 




District of Columbia 




Idaho 

Montana 




Utah 




Washington 

Wvftxninp , ... . 








Total 


S04 


284 


93 


34 j 10 i .SO 











2d. 3d. 4th. 5th. 6th. 7th. 8th. 9th. 10th. 



Grant 


... 305 


305 


305 


305 


305 


305 


306 


308 


305 


Blaine 


... 2B2 


282 


281 


281 


^tx 


281 


284 


283 


282 


Sherman 


. . . . 94 


93 


95 


95 


95 


94 


91 


90 


93 


Edmands.... 


.... 32 


32 


32 


32 


31 


32 


31 


31 


31 


Waahbume. 


... 31 


31 


SO 


30 


31 


31 


32 


32 


32 


VVindom 


. . . . 10 


10 


10 


10 


10 


10 


10 


10 


10 


Garfield 





1 


1 


1 


2 


2 


1 


2 


2 


Harrison.... 





1 




.. 


.. 


.. 


.. 


.. 


1 



CHICAGO COXTENTIOX yOn.VATED FOR PRESIDEXT. 465 

11th. ICtb. 13th. 14th. 15th. 16th. 17th. ISth. l&th. 

Grant 306 304 305 305 308 306 303 305 305 

Blaine 281 283 285 2S5 281 2S3 2^ 283 279 

Sherman 929389 89 888890 9196 

Edmunds 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 

Washburne 32 33 32 S-5 36 36 36 35 32 

Windom 11 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 

Garfield 2 1 1 1 

Hartranft 1 

Hayes 1 1 

McCrary 1 

Davis 1 

20th. 2l3t. 22d. 23d. 24th. 2-5:h. 26th. 2:th. 2Sth. 

Grant 308 305 305 304 305 302 303 306 307 

Blaine 276 276 275 275 279 281 280 277 279 

Sherman 93 96 97 97 93 94 93 93 91 

Edmunds 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 

Washburne.... 35 3-5 3-5 36 3o 35 36 36 3-5 

Windom 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 

Garfield 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 

Hartranft 1 1 1 

The luljoiirnment was carried over Grant's steady 303, 
and the battle was transferred ajaiu to the lobbies of the 
Chicago hotels. 

The convention met again at eleven o'clock on the 
morning of June Sth. After the opening prayer the call 
of the States was ordered for the twenty-ninth ballot tor 
President. There was a disturbance at the outlet over 
the vote of Alabama. It was announced by the chair. 
man, George Turner, as it had been cast all day yester- 
day; but it appeared that Alexander, one of the Grant 
delegates, was not in the hall, but had asked the chair- 
man to cast his vote. Objection tunng made the roll of 
individual delegates was called, and as no alternate ap- 
peared. Grant lost one vote. It required a quarter of an 
hour to settle this dispute, and there was no further epi- 

30 



466 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

sode until Massachusetts was reached, when the nineteen 
Edmunds votes of yesterday were turned over to Sher- 
man and created some excitement as being an indication, 
though slight, that the convention might break. The 
split in the Minnesota vote following immediately after, 
and giving Blaine three of the Windom delegates, was 
the signal for a renewal of the excitement, and consid- 
erable applause followed. A little farther on the result 
showed that Grant had got the Sherman votes in Missis- 
sippi, but there was nothing in the ballot to indicate that 
any such missionary work had been done during the 
night as to give prompt settlement to the great contro- 
versy. During this call Virginia and West Virginia both 
insisted upon an individual call, and it transpired that 
the Sherman delegate from West Virginia who was yes- 
terday missing was on hand. The result of the ballot 
was loudly cheered by Ohio people and the Sherman men 
in general. It was getting their favorite ahead. The 
ballot resulted in 305 votes for Grant, 278 for Blaine, 
116 for Sherman, 12 for Edmunds, 35 for Washburne, 7 
for Windom, and 2 for Garfield. 

" There were some indications as the thirtieth ballot 
progressed that the lesser candidates were giving way. 
Blaine took two of Washburne's Illinois votes, and Blaine 
got three more of the Windom votes from Minnesota, mak- 
ing six of that lot for him. Great amusement was cre- 
ated toward the close of this ballot by the announcement 
of one vote for Gen. Phil Sheridan in Wyoming. Sheri- 
dan was on the stage, near the chair, and when he was a 
moment after discovered by the people, a shout went up 
from all over the house, and Sheridan finally arose and 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 467 

said that he was ver}- much obliged, but he couldn't take 
the nomination unless he were permitted to turn it over 
to his best friend. The galleries saw the point of this, 
since Sheridan's best friend is Grant, and all the Grant 
delegates made the best of the opportunity by an out- 
burst of enthusiasm. The chair also detected the point, 
and said that while the distinguished soldier had been 
given permission to interrupt the order of the conven- 
tion it would be granted no one else. 

'•' On the thirty-first ballot two more of the Indiana 
votes left Blaine and went to Washburne. The Indi- 
ana men never were very stiff for Blaine, and have been 
waiting a chance to get away to somebody else. On this 
ballot also Thompson, of the Pennsylvania delegation, 
left Garfield and went to Grant, giving the third-termers 
35 votes in that delegation. Caleb Taylor had been got 
around to Blaine, while Grier was holding the Garfield 
boom level, although he was entirely alone in his vote for 
the Ohio man. New Mexico kept up the good-nature of 
the galleries on this ballot by giving Conkling one vote. 
The result of the ballot was inspiring to the Grant men, 
and Conkling did his share of the cheering. Five more of 
Blaine's Indiana votes got away on the succeeding ballot, 
going to swell the Washburne column. Farther down 
the list he lost two from Wisconsin in the same way, and 
a cloud came over the Blaine side of the house. There 
was a hurried conference of the Maine senator's leaders 
in the aisle near where the Maine delegates sat, and it 
was a thoroughly dispirited crowd when the ballot was 
announced showing Grant's highest and Blaine's lowest. 
There was no ignoring the fact that the Grant lines 



468 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

could not be broken, and that the Blaine lines were at 
this time wavering. It was apparent the convention was 
on the edge of a break. The thirty-third ballot, which 
was finished at half-past twelve, was without exciting 
event, and with the exception of a little cheer when the 
Sherman votes of Alabama were cast for Blaine, was 
monotonous. About this time the Blaine managers be- 
gan to get their men back into the lines, and a few 
scattering delegates, who were beginning to fear the 
solidity of the Grant column, turned in from their dark 
horses to Blaine. They didn't want Blaine, but they 
were not willing to see him crowded entirely off the 
track while Grant hung on. 

"The close of the thirty-fourth ballot was marked 
by excitement, growing out of Wisconsin's 16 votes for 
Garfield. It was the beginning of the end. To make 
up this bunch, Washburne, Blaine, and Sherman had been 
drawn upon. This ballot brought Grant's vote up to 312, 
and served to arouse the Grant enthusiasm. Garfield 
here arose and addressed the chair. The chairman in- 
quired for what purpose the gentleman rose. ' To a ques- 
tion of order,' said Garfield. * The gentleman will state 
it,' said the chair. 

" * I challenge,' said Mr. Garfield, ' the correctness of 
the announcement that contains votes for me. No man 
has a right, without the consent of the person voted for, 
to have his name announced and voted for in this con- 
vention. Such consent I have not given.' 

" This was overruled by the chairman amidst laughter 
against Garfield, who had made the point on the vote cast 
for him by Wisconsin. 



CHICAGO CONVENTION — NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 469 

" The thirty-fifth was the most interesting ballot of 
the day so far. The call was quick, people had begun to 
show better spirits, and when the 27 Indianians, who had 
been looking around for some way out, cast themselves 
for Garfield, there was a deafening shout, and Garfield's 
seat was immediately surrounded. Maryland followed 
with four for the Ohio dark horse, and Wisconsin for a 
second time turned in sixteen of her votes solid for him. 
It was apparent that the Blaine movement had broken 
up, and the friends of Grant and Garfield had the cheer- 
ing to themselves at the end of this ballot. 

'' The call of the States for the thirty-sixth ballot be- 
gan amidst considerable excitement. Everybody saw that 
Blaine was now out of the way, and it was a matter of 
beating Grant so far as the opposition was concerned. It 
was evident, too, that it would have to be done wdth Gar- 
field, and Connecticut led off on this ballot with 11 votes 
for him. The most of the Washburne vote of Illinois fol- 
lowed this, and- when Indiana was called. General Harri- 
son cast 29 of her 30 votes for Garfield. The storm at 
this point broke. The people rose up and gave one tre- 
mendous cheer, and hats and handkerchiefs were tossed 
high, as they had so often been before. The confusion 
had not fairly subsided when Iowa followed with 22 votes 
for Garfield, and the outburst was renewed and gained in 
force with every fresh start. A little farther down Maine 
cast her 14 votes for the Ohio man, and the cheering was 
greater than ever. The confusion was so great that it 
was almost impossible to go on with the call. The dele- 
gations of Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, 
and Mississippi each insisted upon an individual roll-call, 



470 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

and the Blaine and Sherman votes nearly all turned up 
for Garfield, Conkling was dodging about a good deal at 
this time, but it dawned upon the Grant men that all was 
up with them. They were well disciplined, however, and 
hsng together all the way down the call. It was getting 
down to Pennsylvania. Cameron sat imperturbable in 
the midst of his delegates, and was repeatedly urged to 
cast the solid Pennsylvania delegation for Blaine on this 
ballot. This would have prevented the nomination of 
Garfield on that ballot, at least, and might have stayed 
the Garfield cyclone by getting Blaine back on the track ; 
but Cameron at this time would not acknowledge that 
Garfield could go through as he did go. 

" Ohio was finally called. The delegation had been 
thrown into confusion, and it was some time in getting 
around, but it finally turned up with forty-three for Gar- 
field, the missing delegate being Garfield himself. The 
convention relapsed into cheers again, but recovered in a 
moment to hear General Beaver announce the Pennsyl- 
vania vote as thirty-seven for Grant, twenty-one for Gar 
field. Gordon had swung around to Grant, and Hays, 
who had voted for Blaine, felt himself released when 
Maine virtually put him .out of the field, and went with 
the Grant people. The Grant men got in a little cheer 
here, but it was of short life. As the call went on, as 
well as it could in the confusion, the Blaine delegates 
wheeled into line for Garfield. Vermont was wildly 
cheered when the ten Edmunds votes swung around, and 
Wisconsin's eighteen following shortly after, gave the 
man from Ohio a majority of the whole number. 

" The thousands had kept tally and knew this. There 



CHICAGO CONVENTION — NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 47.1 

was a momentary hush, as if the seven or eight thousand 
people were taking breath, and then the storm burst, and 
while the cheering went on the banners of the several 
States were borne to the place where Ohio's delegation 
sat, Garfield in the midst of them, and there was a scene 
almost equal to that of midnight on Friday. The band 
was playing ' The Battle-Cry of Freedom,' at the lower 
end of the hall, and when the cheering subsided for a mo- 
ment, the air was taken up and sung in chorus by thou- 
sands of voices. Everywhere flags were waving, and on 
the outside of the building cannon were booming and 
thousands were cheering. This went on for a quarter of 
an hour, during which time Conkling sat in his place at 
the head of his delegation without show of emotion of any 
sort. Efforts were made to get Garfield out, but he re- 
mained hidden in the midst of his Ohio friends. 

" After Wisconsin the call of the Territories had little 
interest, and was conducted in the midst of the greatest 
confusion. The call for the first time was verified by a 
re-reading of the votes, and at the announcement of the 
result there was another outburst. The changes in the 
vote by which the nomination was reached are shown in 
the following table : 

29th. 30tli. 31st. 32d. 33d. 84th. 35th. 33th. 

Grant 305 306 308 309 309 313 313 306 

Blaine 278 279 276 270 276 275 257 43 

Sherman 116 120 119 117 110 107 99 3 

Edmunds 13 11 11 H 11 H 11 

Washburne 35 33 31 44 44 30 23 5 

Windom 7 4 3 8 4 4 3 .. 

Garfield.. 2 3 1 1 1 17 50 399 

Sheridan 1 •• •• •• •• 

Conkling 1 •• •• 



472 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" After the announcement the band phiyed the * Con- 
quering Hero/ and the people again stood upon the 
benches and hurrahed and yelled in the same old way. 
In the midst of this the tall form of Logan rose up, and 
he sought to be heard. Conkling was standing in the 
aisle, asking the attention of the chair. As soon as order 
was restored, Conkling was recognized, and in a husky 
voice, sadly in contrast with his tones of the past five 
days, asked to have the nomination of Garfield made 
unanimous. He was loudly cheered. His speech was as 
follows : 

" ^ Mr. Chairman : James A. Garfield, of Ohio, having 
received a majority of all the votes cast, I rise to move 
that he be unanimously presented as the nominee of the 
convention. The chair, under the rules, anticipated me, 
but being on my feet I avail myself of the opportunity 
to congratulate the Republican party of the nation on 
the good-natured and well-tempered disposition which 
has distinguished this animated convention. [Cries of 
' Louder ! ' from the galleries.] I should like to speak 
louder, but having sat here under a cold wind I find 
myself unable to do so. I was about to say, Mr. Chair- 
man, that I trust that the zeal, the fervor, and now the 
unanimity of the scenes of the convention will be trans- 
planted to the field of the country, and that all of us 
who have borne a part against each other will be found 
with equal zeal bearing the banners and carrying the 
lances of the Republican party into the ranks of the 
enemy.' [Apj)lause.] 

" Conkling was followed by Logan, who spoke in the 
midst of calls for Garfield, but Garfield could not be 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 473 

induced to show himself, and Logan got a chance finally 
to go on with a speech after the manner of Conkling. 
He said : 

" * Gentlemen of the Convention : We are to be con- 
gratulated at having arrived at a conclusion in respect 
to presenting the name of a candidate to be the standard- 
bearer of the Republican party for President of the 
United States in union and harmony with each other. 
Whatever may have transpired in this convention that 
may have produced feelings of annoyance will be, I hope, 
considered as a matter of the past. I, with the friends 
of one of the grandest men on the face of the earth, 
stood here to fight a friendly battle for his nomination, 
but this convention has chosen another leader, and the 
men who stood by Grant will be seen in the front of the 
contest for Mr. Garfield. [Cheers.] We will go for- 
ward in the contest, not with tied hands, not with 
sealed lips, not with bridled tongues, but to speak the 
truth in favor of the grandest party that has ever been 
organized in this country, to maintain its principles, to 
uphold its power, to preserve its ascendancy, and my 
judgment is that, with the leader whom you have chosen, 
victory will perch on our banners. [Cheers.] As one 
of the Republicans from Illinois I second the nomina- 
tion of James A. Garfield, and hope it will be made 
unanimous.' [Cheers.] 

" After this, General Beaver, from the head of the 
Pennsylvania delegation, was heard. He referred to 
Pennsylvania as having first put Garfield in nomination, 
and stood by him with one vote when there were no 
others for him, and he promised the largest majority that 



474 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Pennsylvania has given at a Presidential election in re- 
cent years. Here is his speech : 

" ' The State of Pennsylvania having had the honor 
of first nominating in this convention the gentleman 
who has been chosen as the standard-bearer of the 
Republican party in the approaching national contest, 
I rise to second the motion which has been made to 
make the nomination unanimous, and to assure this 
convention and the people of the country that Penn- 
sylvania is heartily in accord with the nomination 
[cheers] ; that she gives her full concurrence to it, 
an(J that this country may expect from her the greatest 
majority that has been given for a Presidential candidate 
in many years.' 

" Mr. Hale, of Maine, said : * Standing here to re- 
turn our heartfelt thanks to the many men in this con- 
vention who have aided us in the fight that we made 
for the Senator from Maine, and speaking for them here, 
as I know that I do, I say this most heartily. We have 
not got the man whom we hoped to nominate when we 
came here, but we have got a man in whom we have the 
greatest and most marked confidence. The nominee of 
this convention is no new or untried man, and in that 
respect he is no " dark horse." When he came here, 
representing his State in the front of his delegation and 
was seen here every man knew him, because of his 
record ; and because of that and because of our faith in 
him, and because we were, in the emergency, glad to 
help make him the candidate of the Republican party 
for President of the United States, — because, I say, of 
these things, I shall stand here to pledge the Maine 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 475 

forces in this convention to earnest effort from now until 
the ides of November to help carry him to the Presi- 
dential chair.' [Cheers.] 

" Then Hale brought all the Blaine folks into this ap- 
parent love-feast. A Texas delegate, one of those old 
Whigs who don't intend to cut their hair until Henry 
Clay is elected President, also agreed to the candidate. 
But he did go so far as to promise the vote of Texas to 
him. General Harrison, who said he was the only de- 
feated candidate for President on the floor, because his 
misguided friend from Pennsylvania, meaning Caleb Tay- 
lor, did not have staying powers, promised Indiana to 
Garfield. At this time there were immense crowds in 
every part of the hall, particularly on the stage and the 
press platform, and when the nomination was made unani- 
mous, people couldn't be made to keep still. Some of 
those in a hurry wanted to go right on with the nomina- 
tion, but General Harrison, at about half-past two, got a 
recess till five o'clock, as he said, for consultation." 

The convention reassembled in the afternoon. The 
nomination of a candidate for Vice-President of the 
United States was. the business on hand. 

California presented E, B. Washburne ; Connecticut 
brought out ex-Governor Jewell ; Florida handed in the 
name of Judge Settle ; Tennessee urged Horace May- 
nard. But these attracted little attention, and it was not 
until General Woodford, of New York, arose and nomi- 
nated Chester A. Arthur, that the convention began to 
wake up. 

A ballot was finally reached, the galleries cheering 
every mention of Wushburne's name. The result of the 



476 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ballot was so generally foreseen that no particular con- 
cern was manifested over the result. There was some 
cheering, but the enthusiasm of this extraordinary con- 
vention had about worn out. The ballot stood : Arthur, 
468 ; Washburne, 19 ; Maynard, 30 ; Jewell, 44 ; Bruce, 
8 ; Woodford, 1 ; Davis, 2. The Pennsylvania vote was 
given — 47 to Arthur, 11 to Washburne. The nomina- 
tion of Arthur was made unanimous on motion of Cali- 
fornia, and then the convention fell to passing a lot of 
resolutions of compliment to everybody, after which a 
committee of one from each State, with Senator Hoar for 
chairman, was appointed to notify the candidates of their 
nomination. Filley, of Missouri, then, explaining that 
life is short, got in a motion to adjourn, which was 
adopted, and people dispersed for good. 

The following is the Platform, or Declaration of Prin- 
ciples, adopted by the Convention : 

" The Republican party in National Convention as- 
sembled, at the end of twenty years since the Federal 
Government was first committed to its charge, submits to 
the people of the United States this brief report of its 
administration. It suppressed rebellion, which had armed 
nearly a million of men to subvert the national authority. 
It reconstructed the union of the States, with freedom in- 
stead of slavery as its corner-stone. It transformed four 
million human beings from the likeness of things to the 
rank of citizens. It relieved Congress from the infamous 
work of hunting fugitive slaves, and charged it to see that 
slavery does not exist. It has raised the value of our 
currency from thirty-eight per cent, to the par of gold. 
It has restored upon a solid basis payment in coin for all 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 477 

the national obligations, and has given us a currency 
absolutely good and equal in every part of our extended 
country. It has lifted the care of the nation from the 
point from where 6 per cent, bonds sold at 86 to that 
where 4 per cent, bonds are eagerly sought at a premium 
under its administration ; railways have increased from 
31,000 miles in 1860 to more than 82,000 miles in 1879 ; 
our foreign trade has increased from $700,000,000 to 
$1,150,000,000 in the same time, and our exports, which 
were $20,000,000 less than our imports in 1860, were 
$264,000,000 more than our imports in 1879. Without 
resorting to loans it has, since the war closed, defrayed 
the ordinary expenses of government, besides the accru- 
ing interest on the public debt, and dispersed annually 
more than $30,000,000 for soldiers' pensions. It has 
paid $888,000,000 of the public debt, and by refunding 
the balance at lower rates has reduced the annual interest 
charges from nearly $151,000,000 to less than $89,000,- 
000. All the industries of the country have revived, 
labor is in demand, wages have increased, and through- 
out the entire country there is evidence of a coming pros- 
perity greater than we have ever enjoyed. Upon this 
record the Republican party asks for the continued confi- 
dence and support of the people, and this convention sub- 
mits for their approval the following statements of the 
principle and purposes which will continue to guide and 
inspire its eflbrts : 

" First. We affirm that the work of the last twenty- 
one years has been such as to commend itself to the favor 
of the nation, and that the fruits of the costly victory 
which we have achieved through immense difficulties 



478 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

should be preserved ; after that the peace regained should 
be cherished ; that the dissevered Union now happily 
'restored should be perpetuated, and that the liberty se- 
cured to this generation should be transmitted undimin- 
ished to future generations ; that the order established 
and the credit acquired should never be impaired ; that 
the pensions promised should be extinguished by the full 
payment of every dollar thereof; that the reviving indus- 
tries should be further promoted, and that the commerce, 
already so great, should be steadily encouraged. 

" Second. The Constitution of the United States is a 
supreme law and not a mere contract. Out of confeder- 
ated States it made a sovereign nation. Some powers 
are denied to the nation while others are denied to the 
States, but the boundary between the powers delegated 
and those reserved is to be determined by the National 
and not by the State tribunals. 

" Third. The work of popular education is left to the 
care of the several States, but it is the duty of the Na- 
tional Government to aid that work to the extent of its 
constitutional duty. The intelligence of the nation is 
but the aggregate of the intelligence of the several States, 
and the destiny of the nation must not be guided by the 
genius of any one State, but by the average genius of all. 

"Fourth. The Constitution wisely forbids Congress 
to make any law respecting an establishment of religion, 
but it is idle to hope that the nation can be protected 
against the influence of sectarianism while each State is 
exposed to its domination. We therefore recommend 
that the Constitution be so amended as to lay the same 
prohibition upon the legislature of each State and to for- 



CHICAGO CONVENTION NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 479 

bid the appropriation of public funds to the support of 
sectarian schools. 

''Fifth. We affirm the belief, avowed in 1876, that 
the duties levied for the purpose of revenue should so 
discriminate as to favor American labor. That no further 
grant of the public domain should be made to any rail- 
way or other corporation ; that slavery having perished 
in the States, its twin barbarity, polygamy, must die in 
the Territories. That everywhere the protection accorded 
to citizens of American birth must be secured to citizens 
by American adoption, and that we esteem it the duty 
of Congress to develop and improve our watercourses 
and harbors, but that further subsidies to private per- 
sons or corporations must cease; that the obligations 
of the Republic to the men who preserved its integrity 
in the hour of battle are undiminished by the lapse of 
fifteen years since their final victory ; to do them perpet- 
ual honor is and shall forever be the grateful privilege 
and sacred duty of the American people. 

" Sixth. Since the authority to regulate immigration 
and intercourse between the United States and foreign 
nations rests with Congress, or with the United States 
and its treaty-making power, the Republican party, re- 
garding the unrestricted emigration of Chinese as an evil 
of great magnitude, invoke the exercise of those powers 
to restrain and limit that immigration by the enactment 
of such just, humane, and reasonable provisions as will 
produce that result. 

" Seventh. That the purity and patriotism which char- 
acterize the earlier career of Rutherford B. Hayes in 
peace and war, and which guided the tho ughts of our im- 



480 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

mediate predecessors to him for a Presidential candidate 
have continued to inspire him in his career as Chief Ex- 
ecutive, and that history will accord to his administration 
the honors which are due to an efficient, just, and cour- 
teous discharge of the public business, and will honor his 
interpositions between the people and proposed partisan 
laws. 

" Eighth. We charge upon the Democratic party the 
habitual sacrifice of patriotism and justice to a supreme 
and insatiable lust of office and patronage ; that to obtain 
possession of the National and State Governments and 
the control of place and position they have obstructed all 
effort to promote the purity and to conserve the freedom 
of suff'rage, and have devised fraudulent certifications and 
returns, have labored to unseat lawfully elected members 
of Congress to secure at all hazards the vote of a majority 
of the States in the House of Representatives ; have en- 
deavored to occupy by force and fraud the places of trust 
given to others by the people of Maine, and rescued by 
the courage in action of Maine's patriotic sons ; have by 
methods vicious in principle and tyrannical in practice at- 
tached partisan legislation to bills upon whose passage the 
very movements of government depend ; have crushed 
the rights of individuals, have advocated the principle and 
sought the favor of rebellion against the nation, and have 
endeavored to obliterate the sacred memories of the war 
and to overcome its inestimable valuable results of nation- 
ality, personal freedom, and individual equality. The 
equal, steady, and complete enforcement of laws and the 
protection of all our citizens in the enjoyment of all privi- 
leges and communities guaranteed by the Constitution 



CHICAGO CONVENTION — NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 481 

are the first duties of the nation. The dangers of a solid 
South can only be averted by a faithful performance of 
every promise which the nation has made to the citizens ; 
the execution of the laws and the punishment of all those 
who violate them are the only safe methods by which an 
enduring peace can be secured and genuine prosperity es- 
tablished throughout the South. Whatever promises the 
nation makes the nation must perform, and the nation 
cannot with safety delegate this duty to the States. The 
solid South must be divided by the powerful agencies of 
the ballot, and all opinions must there find free expres- 
sion, and to this end the honest voters must be protected 
against terrorism, violence, and fraud. And we affirm it 
to be the duty and the purpose of the Republican party 
to use every legitimate means to restore all the Sttites of 
this Union to the most perfect harmony as may be prac- 
ticable ; and we submit to the practical, sensible people 
of the United States to say whether it would not be 
dangerous to the dearest interests of our country at this 
time to surrender the administration of the National 
Government to a party which seeks to overthrow the ex- 
isting policy under which we are so prosperous, and thus 
bring distrust and confusion where there is now order, 
confidence, and hope." 

The following resolution was added to the platform : 
" The Republican party, adhering to the principles 
affirmed by its last national convention of respect for 
the constitutional rules governing appointment to office, 
adopts the declaration of President Hayes, that the re- 
form in the civil service shall be thorough, radical, and 
complete. To that end^ it demands the co-operation of 

31 



482 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the legislative with the executive departments of the 
Government, and that Congress shall so legislate that 
fitness, ascertained by proper practical tests, shall admit 
to the public service." 

The correspondent of the New York Tribune wrote 
as follows concerning the scene attending the nomina- 
tion of General Garfield : 

" When General Harrison mounted on his chair and 
called out that Indiana, out of 30 votes, gave 29 for 
Garfield, neither the convention nor the galleries could 
contain themselves any longer. There was a universal 
uproar; half the convention rose to its feet. Leaders 
of all factions ran hurriedly hither and thither through 
the convention; and, while the building was resound- 
ing with loud cheers for Garfield, there was a cluster 
of excited delegates about the general himself, who, 
sat quiet and cool in his ordinary place at the end 
of one of the rows of seats in the Ohio delegation, hav- 
ing his own seat in the middle aisle near the very rear 
of the convention. 

" He wore the white badge of an Ohio delegate on 
his coat, and held his massive head steadily immovable. 
But for an appearance of extra resoluteness on his face, 
as that of a man who was repressing internal excite- 
ment, he might have been supposed to have as little 
interest in the proceedings as any other delegate on the 
floor of the convention. He was, in fact, going through 
one of the most extraordinary experiences ever given to 
an American citizen. He was being struck by Presi- 
dential lightning while sitting in 'the body which was 
to nominate him. He was being nominated for Presi- 



CHICAGO CONVENTION— NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 483 

dent at half-past one o'clock in the afternoon, when he 
could hardly have dreamed of such a thing at nine 
o'clock in the morning. 

" There has been no such dramatic incident in poli- 
tics, for a great many years at least, except possibly the 
nomination of Horatio Seymour in 1868. Entirely apart 
from all political considerations, it was an extraordinary 
and impressive incident to see this quiet man suddenly 
wheeled by a popular sentiment into the position of 
standard-bearer to the great Republican party, and in 
all probability into the Presidency itself, with its great 
power and world-wide fame. All this while the crowd 
had been cheering, and the elements of the convention 
were dissolving and crystallizing in an instant of time. 

" Where the Sherman vote was going, whetheE 
simply by force of drifting or not, was apparent enough 
when a North Carolina delegate seized the banner of 
his State and waved it towards the Ohio delegation, all 
of whom were on their feet. The situation was indeed 
peculiar. General Garfield had entered the convention 
as the loyal representative of Secretary Sherman, who 
was still a candidate. The Ohio delegation, most of 
whom were warm friends of both men, were in honor 
bound to support Mr. Sherman so long as there was any 
possibility of his nomination. General Garfield had, like 
a truthful and honorable gentleman, set his face from 
the first against all suggestions that he should become a 
candidate, feeling that any yielding to such suggestions 
would be rankly disloyal to the friend he had come to 
support. Now he was being forced into the field in spite 
of himself, and the indications were that his own vote 



484 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

would soon surpass that of his candidate. The Ohio 
delegation were seen to be in anxious, flurried consulta- 
tion about General Garfield's chair, ex-Governor Den- 
nison. Congressman Butterworth, and Major Bickham 
being prominent in the group. 

"Nothing seemed to come of it, however, and when 
the crowd had been quieted down the secretary was 
again in his place, ready to resume the roll-call. When 
he called ' Iowa ' every ear was strained to hear the 
reply, which had to travel from the farthest limit of the 
body of delegates. The 22 votes of that State had been 
cast on every ballot for James G. Blaine, and if these 
votes should be cast for Garfield, it would prove that the 
instantaneous fusion of the anti-Grant elements of the 
convention was complete. When the chairman of the 
delegation called out that Iowa cast 22 votes for James 
A. Garfield, a wild storm of cheering broke out, which 
after a few moments died away, while there was a re- 
newal of the hasty and whispered consultation among the 
Ohio delegates about General Garfield's chair. Suddenly 
the Ohio delegation broke out in cries and applause, and 
an electric cheer spread from them as a centre in an. in- 
stant all over the convention, telling without any need of 
words that Ohio's new candidate had replaced the old; 
that Secretary Sherman had been withdrawn, and that, 
with the full consent of his friends, Garfield was a can- 
didate. 

" From this time the votes split off between Grant 
and Garfield almost without exception, the roll-call pro- 
ceeding amid the growing exultation of the anti-Grant 
men, who thought they saw victory before them. Kan- 



CHICAGO CONVENTION — NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT. 485 

sas gave its 6 Blaine votes to Garfield, Grant's 4 votes 
standing firm. In Kentucky the Blaine votes came to 
Garfield. Every Garfield vote now was applauded, while 
Mr. Conkling watched the secretary with a cold eye. 
Senator Kellogg cast the vote of Louisiana, 8 for Garfield 
8 for Grant. When Maine was called, Mr. Hale arose, 
looking sad, to be sure, but still with his accustomed air 
of quiet resolution, and cast those 14 votes, that repre- 
sented so much loyal affection for James G. Blaine, for 
James A. Garfield, of Ohio. There was a great cheer at 
this for the men from Maine, with man}^ expressions of 
sympathy for their keen disappointment passing through 
the throng. Almost the whole body of the convention 
was up hurrahing at the rate of three times three a 
minute. Garfield was nominated." 



CHAPTER XI. 

GENERAL GARFIELD SINCE THE CHICAGO CONVENTION. 

The Nomination unsoup^ht by General Garfield— Congratulatory Telegrams 
— How the News was received in Congress — Scene in the House — Gen- 
eral Garfield notified of his Nomination— His Reply— Returns Home- 
Reception at Cleveland — General Garfield presides at the Reunion of 
Hiram College — His Speech on that Occasion — A Glance at the Past — 
Reception at Mentor — Visit to Painesville — General Garfield addresses 
his Neighbors— Sunday at Home— General Garfield returns to Wash- 
ington City — His Journey — A Serenade at Washington — Speech of Gen- 
eral Garfield — Adjournment of Congress— Fourth of July Speech at 
Painesville — General Garfield's Letter accepting the Nomination for the 
Presidency— Personal Characteristics— General Garfield's Washington 
Home — The Farm at Mentor — The Garfield Family. 

General Garfield's nomination for the Presidency had 
come to him entirely unsought. He had loyally sup- 
ported the claims of Secretary Sherman to the office, and 
had discountenanced all attempts to put himself forward 
as a candidate for the high honor. The convention, how- 
ever, had seen fit to nominate him in spite of his reluc- 
tance. The nomination gave great satisfaction through- 
out the country, and it was universally admitted that the 
choice of the convention was the best that could have 
been made. 

The following telegrams were received by General 
Garfield immediately after the nomination was made : * 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 487 

*' Executive Mansion, Washington, June 8. 
" General James A. Garfield : — You will receive no 
heartier congratulation to-day than mine. This both for 
your own and your country's sake. " R. B. Hayes." 

" Washington, D. C. 
" Hon. James A. Garfield : — Accept my hearty con- 
gratulation. The country is to be congratulated, as well 
as yourself. '' C. Schurz." 

Dispatches to like effect were also received from 
other members of the Cabinet. 

" Washington, June 8. 
" Hon. James A. Garfield, Chicago : — I congratulate 
you with all my heart upon your nomination as President 
of the United States. You have saved the Republican 
party and the country from a great peril and assured 
the continued success of Republican principles. 

" John Sherman." 

"Washington, Tuesday — 1.45 p. m. 
" Hon. James A. Garfield, Chicago : — Maine's vote, 
this moment cast for you, goes with my hearty concur- 
rence. I hope it will aid in securing your nomination 
and assuring victory to the Republican party. 

" James G. Blaine." 

General Garfield replied as follows : 

" Chicago, June 8. 
" Hon. J. G. Blaine, Washington : — Accept my thanks 
for your generous despatch. " James A. Garfield." 



488 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

The scene in the House of Representatives, Washing- 
ton, on receipt of the news of Gen. Garfield's nomination, 
is thus described in the Associated Press despatches : 

" The House passed a whole batch of private bills to- 
day. Finally a public-building bill was called up and 
objected to, whereupon Mr. Hooker emphatically declared 
his intention of objecting to every proposition presented. 
A noisy discussion ensued, and the confusion was in- 
creased by the Chicago despatches which were coming in 
announcing the large additions to Garfield's vote. Order 
was only secured when Blackburn (Kentucky) presented 
the report of the conference committee on the post-office 
appropriation bill, which report was agreed to. Mr. 
Hooker adhered to his intention of objecting to every 
proposition, and a motion was made to adjourn. During 
the calling of the roll there was a great deal of excite- 
ment shown by the members over the convention news, 
and when Garfield's name was called it was greeted with 
applause on both the Republican and Democratic side of 
the chamber. 

" The announcement which came in soon afterward 
that Garfield was nominated was received with loud 
cheers and applause from the members who had assem- 
bled in the lobby back of the Speaker's desk, and the 
confusion was so great that the roll-call was interrupted. 
Members gathered in groups and discussed the nomina- 
tion of Garfield, which appeared to meet with almost 
universal approval from the Republicans, and was con- 
ceded by the Democrats to be a strong one. The second 
call of Garfield's name was the signal for a burst of ap- 
plause from the Repubhcans. 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 489 

" The motion was finally carried, and accordingly, the 
House at 2.30 adjourned. Cheers for Garfield were then 
given, while cries of ' Speech from Hawley ' and ' Haw- 
ley for Vice-President ' went up, but that gentleman did 
not respond. 

" Mr. Robeson. — I move that General Hawley take 
the chair. This was carried unanimously amid loud 
cheers. When Hawley took the chair the House pre- 
sented a curious sight. Every chair was occupied, the 
seats of the absent members being filled by spectators 
who, upon the adjournment, had crowded into the hall, 
while in the rear of the seats were groups of men evi- 
dently full of excitement. 

" Mr. Hawley, on taking the chair, said : I beg leave 
to say that we occupy this floor with the kind consent of 
our friends on the right, who will have their opportunity 
by-and-bye. [Laughter. Cries of ' Speech ! Speech !'] 

"Mr. Hawley. — I have no speech to make. The 
nomination made at Chicago is its own speech for every 
Republican of this House, and our personal good-will goes 
with our old friend and associate, General Garfield. [Ap- 
plause.] I have no doubt from what I have seen and 
heard, that this event — this consummation — is in the 
very highest degree satisfactory to every Republican 
here, whatever may have been his personal preference. 
[Applause.] We have been warmly divided in the past ; 
we will be much more warmly united in the future. 
[Loud applause.] I think one result will be — I am sup- 
posing that there are no Democrats here — to compel an 
excellent nomination on the other side, so that the coun- 
try we all love will be certain of a good President for 



490 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

the next four years, personally, whatever his political 
opinions may be." (Loud applause, in which the Demo- 
crats joined.) 

Mr. Robeson was loudly called. In response, that gen- 
tleman said : " As members of the American Congress — 

" A Democrat. — Both sides ? 

" Mr. Robeson, continuing. — Both sides. I think we 
have a right to congratulate the whole country that a 
man whom we all know to be a man of character and 
capacity beyond impeachment, has been nominated by 
one of the great political parties for the highest office in 
the gift of the people. [Applause.] Therefore, Mr. 
Chairman, I speak in acknowledgment in behalf of the 
House of Representatives that one of our number, con- 
spicuous before the people on account of his services on 
this floor, has been selected as the standard-bearer of 
the great political party to which I belong. That is a 
sentiment which affects neither the politics nor the feel- 
ings of anybody, and I ask everybody within the reach 
of my voice to join me in giving three cheers for the can- 
didate selected from our body as the candidate of a great 
party. [The Republicans rose and gave the three cheers 
with a will, but the Democrats, though joining in the 
cheering, retained their seats.] I move, Mr. Chairman, 
that a committee be appointed, and I suggest as its 
chairman the oldest member of the House, Judge Kelley, 
of Pennsylvania, to send by telegraph our congratulations 
to our fellow-Congressman on his nomination. [Ap- 
plause.] Cries then went up for ' Kelley,' and Chairman 
Hawley stated that Mr. Kelley would have occupied the 
chair, but that he had not been present." 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 491 

" Mr. Kelley. — I have been in that chair but once, 
though I have been here nineteen years, and then I felt 
so like a fool that I never got into it again. [Laughter.] 
I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Robeson) and 
his associates on this floor for having delegated to me 
the chairmanship of the committee to which has been 
confided so grateful a duty. I beg leave to inform the 
chairman and the House that, taking advantage of cir- 
cumstances, I slipped out when Garfield was at 338 and 
sent the following telegram : * Accept congratulations and 
pledge of earnest support.' [Applause.] I rejoice most 
heartily in this nomination. General Garfield is a man of 
rare force of character, of wide attainments, of great sim- 
plicity, and a man who adheres as firmly as a true party 
man even may to his personal convictions ; and our friends 
on the other side, in the dejection which now overcomes 
them while a bad nomination for them is possible, will 
find satisfaction in knowing that they know the man to 
be one who will administer the government faithfully, 
fairly, and patriotically after we shall have inaugurated 
him." (Applause.) 

The chair appointed Kelley, Robeson, Browne, Martin 
(N. C), Page, Richardson (N. Y.), and Henderson (111.) 
as the committee to send a congratulatory telegram to 
Garfield. 

Mr. Richardson was appointed at the suggestion of 
Mr. Voorhees (N. Y.), who was unwilling that the great 
State of New York should not be represented on the com- 
mittee, and Henderson at the suggestion of Cannon (111.), 
who thought that Illinois, " the third State — always Re- 
publican," should be represented. 



492 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

The meeting then, after giving three more cheers for 
Garfield, adjourned. 

The following is the full text of the telegram imme- 
diately sent to General Garfield : 

" Washington, June 8, 1880. 
■ " To General J. A. Garfield, Chicago : — " Under in- 
struction of your Congressional associates, assembled in 
the hall of the House of Representatives, General Haw- 
ley in the chair, we congratulate you on your nomination 
as the candidate of the great Republican party for the 
Presidency of the United States. 

" W. D. Kelley, Geo. M. Robeson, 

Thos. M. Browne, Joseph J. Martin,-^ 

Horace F. Page, D. P. Richardson, 

Thomas J. Henderson." 

The convention appointed a committee to wait upon 
General Garfield and inform him of his nomination. This 
committee waited upon him at his rooms at the Grand 
Pacific Hotel, on the evening of the 8th of June. It 
was headed by Senator Hoar, the chairman of the con- 
vention. 

" General Garfield," said Mr. Hoar, " the gentlemen 
present are appointed by the National Republican Con- 
vention, representatives of every State in the Union, who 
have been directed to convey to you the formal ceremo- 
nial notice of your nomination as the Republican candi- 
date for the office of President of the United States. It 
is known to you that the convention which has made this 
nomination assembled divided in opinion and in council in 
regard to the candidate. It may not be known to you 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 493 

with what unanimity of pleasure and of hopes the con- 
Tention has received the result which it has reached. 
You represent not only the distinctive principles and 
opinion of the Republican party, but you represent also 
its unity, and in the name of every State in the Union 
represented on the committee, I convey to you the as- 
surance of the cordial support of the Republican party 
of these States at the coming election." 

General Garfield replied : " Mr. President and Gen- 
tlemen : I assure you that the information you have offi- 
cially given me brings the sense of very grave respon- 
sibility, and especially so in view of the fact that I was 
a member of your body, a fact which could not have been 
s1^ with propriety had I had the slightest expectation that 
my own name would be connected with the nomination 
for the office. I have felt with you great solicitude re- 
garding the situation of our party during the struggle, 
but believing that you are correct in assuring me that 
substantial unity has been reached in the conclusion, it 
gives me gratification far greater than any personal pleas- 
ure your announcement can bring. I accept the trust 
committed to my hands. As to the work of our party, as 
to the character of the campaign to be entered upon, I 
will take an early occasion to reply more fully than I can 
properly do now. I thank you for the assurances of con- 
fidence and esteem and unity which you have presented 
me with, and shall hope that we may see our future as 
promising as are the indications of to-night." 

General Garfield left Chicago by the Lake Shore and 
Michigan Southern Railroad, on the morning of June 9th. 
Cleveland was reached about 8.30 in the evening. The 



494 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

journey was an unbroken ovation, General Garfield being 
received at all the points on the line by large and enthu- 
siastic crowds. Cleveland was ablaze with enthusiasm. 
After a rousing welcome at the depot, General GnrfieM 
was conveyed to the Kennard House as quickly as possi- 
ble, where speeches were made from the balcony by Gov- 
ernor Foster, General Ed. S. Meyer, and Judge P. F. 
Young. General Garfield said : 

" Fellow Citizens of my Native County and of my 
State : I thank you for this remarkable demonstration of 
your good-will and enthusiasm on this occasion. I can- 
not at this time proceed upon any speech. All that I 
have to say is, that I know that all this demonstration 
means your gladness of the unity and harmony and goot! 
feeling of a great political party, and in part your good 
feeling toward a neighbor, an old friend. For all of these 
reasons I thank you, and bid you good night." 

There was great applause and cheers. 

The- 10th of June was passed pleasantly at Cleve- 
land, and on the 11th, General Garfield presided at the 
reunion of Hiram College. The trains that arrived at 
Hiram were crowded to overflowing with people, and the 
enthusiasm for the general completely overshadowed the 
interest in any of the proceedings where he was not the 
central figure. The Presidential candidate received in 
the morning a number of congratulatory and business tele- 
grams and letters, some of the more important of which 
he answered. He did not attend the early forenoon soci- 
ety gathering, but at half-past ten o'clock, with Dr. J. P. 
Robeson, Captain C. E. Henry, President B. A. Hins- 
dale, of Hiram College, and Mr. William Robeson — all 



..4 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 495 

old friends — he entered the Heunion Hall. There were 
loud cheers as the general assumed his place on the plat- 
form. Prayer was offered by the Rev. J. Knight, of Wil- 
mington, Ohio, and President Hinsdale arose and intro- 
duced General Garfield as chairman, with explanatory 
remarks as to why it had been arranged to have the re- 
union. The preparations, Mr. Hinsdale said, were made 
before the nomination of General Garfield, and he had ac- 
cepted an invitation to preside over the reunion meeting 
two months ago. On taking the chair, General Garfield 
was greeted with loud applause. He said : 

" Mr. President and fellow-citizens : I have been so 
many years accustomed to visit you that it would be en- 
tirely unbecoming in me to be the cause of disorder and 
disturbance. I am here, first, because I promised to be 
here, and second, because I greatly desire to be here, and 
I will not interfere with the course of your proposed pro- 
gramme. Certainly not at this time, but will begin im- 
mediately by introducing to you the gentleman who was 
to deliver the regular address of the reunion, the Rev. 
J. M. Atwater, once a student in this place, and still later 
the president of the college, and now a distinguished 
minister." 

The address of Mr. Atwater related to college matters, 
and was well received. At the close. General Garfield 
made a brief speech complimenting the previous addresses 
and referring to the past history of the college. The 
Rev. A. S. Hayden then spoke, after which General Gar- 
field delivered the following address : 

" Ladies and gentlemen : There are two chapters in 
the history of this institution. You have heard the one 



496 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

relating to the founders. They were all pioneers of this 
Western reserve, or nearly all. They were all men of 
knowledge and great force of character. Nearly all were 
not men of means, but they planned this little institution. 
In 1850, it was a cornfield, with a solid brick building in 
the centre of it, and that was all. Almost all the rest 
has been the work of the institution itself. 

" Without a dollar of endowment, without a powerful 
friend anywhere, but with a corps of teachers who were 
told to go on to the ground a,nd see what they could make 
out of it, to find their own pay out of the little tuition 
that they could receive. They invited students of their 
own spirit to come on the ground and see what they 
could make of it, and the response has been that many 
have come, and the chief part of the respondents I see in 
the faces around and before me to-day. It was a simple 
question of sinking or swimming for themselves. And I 
know that we are all inclined to be a little clannish over 
our own. We have, perhaps, a right to be ; but I do not 
know of any place, I do not know of any institution that 
has accomplished more with so little means as has this 
school on Iliram Hill. 

" I know of no place where the doctrine of self-help 
has a fuller development, b}'- necessity as well as finally 
by choice, as here on this hill. The doctrine of self-help 
and of force has the chief place among these men and 
women around here. As I said a great many years ago 
about that, the act of Hiram was to throw its young men 
and women overboard and let them try it for themselves ; 
and all those men able to get ashore got ashore, and I 
think we have few cases of drowning anywhere. 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 497 

"Now, T look over these faces, and I mark tlie several 
geological changes remarked by Mr. Atwater so well in 
his address ; but in the few cases of change of geological 
fact there is, I find, no fossils. Some are dead and glori- 
fied in our memories, but those who are not are alive — I 
think all. 

" The teachers and the students of this school built it 
up in every sense. They made the cornfield into Hiram 
Campus. Those fine groves you see across the road, they 
planted. I well remember the day when they turned out 
into the woods to find beautiful maples, and brought them 
in; when they raised a little purse to purchase ever- 
green; when each young man,^for himself one, and per- 
haps a second for some young lady, if he was in love, 
planted two trees on the campus, and then named them 
after himself. There are several here to-day who remem- 
ber Bolen. Bolen planted there a tree, and Bolen has 
planted a tree that has a lustre — Bolen was shot through 
the heart at Winchester. 

" There are many here that can go and find the tree 
that you have named after yourself. They are great, 
strong trees to-day, and your names, like your trees, are, 
I hope, growing still. 

" I believe outside of or beyond the physical features 
of the place, that there was a stronger pressure of work 
to the square inch in the boilers that run this establish- 
ment than any other that I know of, and, as has been so 
well said, that has told all the wiiile with these young 
men and women. The struggle, wherever the uncouth 
and untutored farmer boys — a farmer, of course — that 
came here to try themselves and find what kind of people 

32 



498 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

they were. They came here to go on a voyage of discov- 
ery. Your discovery was yourselves, in many cases. I 
hope the discovery was a fortune, and the friendships 
then formed out of that have bound this group of people 
longer and farther than most any other I have known in 
life. They are scattered all over the United States, in 
every field of activity, and if I had time to name them,' 
the sun would go down before I had finished. 

" I believe the rules of this institution limits us to 
time — 1 think it is said five minutes. I may have over- 
gone it already. We have so many already that we want 
to hear from, we will all volunteer. We expect now to 
wrestle awhile with the work before us. Some of these 
boys remember the time when I had an exercise that I 
remember with pleasure. I called a young lad out in a 
class and said, in two minutes you are to speak to the 
best of your ability on the following subject (naming it), 
and gave the subject and let him wrestle with it. I was 
trying a theory, and I behove that wresthng was a good 
thing. I will not vary the performance save in this. J 
will call you and restrict you to five minutes, and let you 
select your theme about the old days of Hiram. 

" Now, we have a grave judge in this audience, who 
wandered away from Hiram into the forty-second regi- 
ment into the South, and, after the victory, stayed there. 
I will call now, not as a volunteer n»an, but as a drafted 
man. Judge Clark, of Mississippi." 

There were other speeches, and early in the evening 
General Garfield, amid loud cheers, bid adieu to Hiram, 
and drove to his home in Mentor. 

On the morning of the 12th, General Garfield was 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 499 

given a rousing reception by the citizens of Mentor, at 
the Lake Shore Railroad depot, where they had erected 
an arch in his honor. Immediately after dinner, General 
Garfield stepped into a carriage, with his near friend and 
neighbor, Dr. J. P. Robinson, and drove toward Paines- 
ville, where another reception by the Lake county people 
was to take place at Ryder's Hotel, a half-way house be- 
tween Painesville and Mentor. A band of music and a 
procession of carriages* met him. Mayor J. B. Burroughs, 
of Painesville, brother of Congressman Burroughs, of 
Michigan, and Mr. A. T. Tinker, president of the Paines- 
ville Garfield Club, were in the van. These two gentle- 
men entered the general's carriage amid loud cheers. As 
they passed Lake Erie Seminar}^, the pupils waved hand- 
kerchiefs and applauded General Garfield. The proces- 
sion increased in size and marched through the principal 
streets of Painesville, finally bringing up at the public 
square, where there was a throng of people. 

Mayor Burroughs introduced General Garfield, who, 
after the applause had subsided, spoke as follows : 

" Fellow Citizens and Neighbors of Lake County : 
I am exceedingly glad to know that you care enough to 
come out on a hot day like this in the midst of your 
busy work to congratulate me. I know it comes from 
the hearts of as noble a people as lives on the earth. 
[Cheers.] In my somewhat long public services there 
never has been a time, in however great difficulties I 
may have been placed, that I could not feel the strength 
that came from resting back upon the people of the 
Nineteenth district. To know that they were behind 
me with their intelligence, their critical judgment, their 



500 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

confidence and their support was to make me strong in 
everything I undertook that was right. I have always 
felt your sharp, severe, and just criticism, and my worthy, 
noble, supporting friends always did what they believed 
was right. I know you have come here to-day not 
altogether, indeed not nearly, for my sake, but for the 
sake of the relations I am placed in to the larger con- 
stituency of the people of the United States. It is not 
becoming in me to speak nor shall I speak one word 
touching politics. I know you are here to-day with- 
out regard to politics. I know you are all here as 
my neighbors and my friends, and as such I greet you 
and thank you for this candid and gracious welcome. 
[Cheers.] Thus far in my life I have sought to do what 
I could according to my light. More than that I could 
never hope to do. All of that I shall try to do, and if 
I can continue to have the good opinion of my neigh- 
bors of this district, it will be one of my greatest satis- 
factions. I thank you again, fellow-citizens, for this 
cordial and generous welcome." (Applause and cheers.) 

Mr. Tinker delivered a formal speech of reception 
and was followed by Dr. Robinson, Judge Reuben 
Hitchcock, and William Slade. General Garfield then 
shook hands with hundreds of enthusiastic people, and 
at dusk left for his home, where he remained quietly 
over Sunday. 

On Sunday he attended church in the morning, and 
was the centre of attraction for hundreds of country eyes. 
After dinner he endeavored to answer some of the vast 
amount of letters that have accumulated, but no sooner 
had he written a few lines than some callers would in- 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 501 

terrupt him. Many from the surrounding towns and 
country drove to Mentor to look at the general, and at 
least to shake h;inds, if not to converse at length, and 
none could be absolutely turned away. The general 
was called on in the evening by friends from far off 
Cleveland. 

On the morning of the 14th, General Garfield left 
Mentor for Washington City. He arrived at Youngs- 
town early in the forenoon and there took the through 
train on the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Road and arrived 
in Pittsburgh at 8.27 p. m. He telegraphed the Bal- 
timore and Ohio authorities, and they held back the 
through express from 7.55 to 8.35 for him. The pas- 
senger agent of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie drove him 
to the Baltimore and Ohio depot, where, notwithstand- 
ing his efforts to avoid recognition, a little crowd soon 
congregated. " I will not be interviewed," he said, in 
response to a reporter. Then he received the congratu- 
lations of a long line of admirers and friends, Avho shook 
his hand as he passed on through the car. While he 
was yet returning thanks the train pulled out of the 
depot, his admirers dismounted and the general was 
left to the mercy of the newspaper men who stuck by 
him. He was far more anxious to interview than to be 
interviewed. He fired questions thick and fast. Buried 
in the seclusion of his own home he had not heard the 
report of Tilden's withdrawal, and when informed of the 
report he went into a deep study for an instant. He 
was exceedingly anxious to know how the news of his 
nomination was received in this neighborhood, and when 
informed that the enthusiasm was intense he appeared 



502 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

greatly gratified. He stated that he had received a 
grand ovation at Youngstown and other points along the 
line, considering that he had striven to keep his journey 
quiet. When the train reached Hazlewood, on the Bal- 
timore and Ohio Road, within the city limits, a stop was 
made so that the general could show himself to the 
Garfield Club of that ward. Three rousing cheei'S were 
given for the nominee, and the general returned thanks. 
The cheers were renewed as the train pulled out. 

Washington was reached the next day, and during 
the remainder of the session of Congress Gen. Garfield 
devoted himself to his duties as a member of the House. 

On the evening of the 16th of July, a serenade was 
given to General Garfield, at his quarters at the Riggs 
House, by the National Veteran Association. The portico 
of the Riggs House was tastefully draped with flags and 
bunting, and the surrounding streets were brilliantly 
illuminated with calcium lights, while at frequent inter- 
vals rockets and other fireworks were set off from the 
steps of the Treasury Department. As the procession 
filed past cheers were given for Garfield, and as that 
gentleman appeared on the platform, accompanied by ex- 
Secretary Robeson and Attorney-General Devens, they 
were renewed. General Devens made a short speech, 
in which he referred to the great Republican Presidents, 
Lincoln, Grant, and Hayes, and each name was greeted 
with cheers. He then introduced General Garfield as a 
soldier whose shield is unsoiled and whose sword is spot- 
less ; a statesman on whom rests no stain or dishonor ; a 
Christian gentleman, respecting the rights of every man 
because he himself is kind, considerate, and self-respecting 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 503 

always. General Garfield returned thanks for the dem- 
onstration and said : 

" I cannot at this time utter a word on the subject 
of general politics. I would not mar the cordiality of 
this welcome, to which to some extent all are gathered, 
by any reference except^ to the present moment and 
its significance; but I wish to say that a large portion 
of this assemblage to-night are my comrades, late of the 
war for the Union. For them I can speak with entire 
propriety, and can say that these very streets heard the 
measured tread of your disciplined feet years ago, when 
the imperilled Republic needed your hands and your 
hearts to save it. And you came back with your num- 
bers decimated, but those you left behind were immortal 
and glorified heroes forever ; and those you brought back 
came carrying, under tattered banners and in bronzed 
hands, the ark of the covenant of your Republic in safety 
out of the bloody baptism of the war [cheers] ; and you 
brought it in safety to be saved forever by your valor 
and the wisdom of your brethren who were at home, and 
by this you were again added to the great civil army of 
the Republic. I greet you, comrades and fellow-soldiers 
and the great body of distinguished citizens who are 
gathered here to-night, who are the strong stay and sup- 
port of the business, of the prosperity, of the peace, of 
the civic ardor and glory of the Republic, and I thank 
you for your welcome to-night. It was said in a wel- 
come to one who came to England to be a part of her 
glory — and all the nation spoke when it was said : 

' Normans and Saxons and Danes are we, 
But all of us Danes iu our welcome of thee ;' 



504 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

and we say to-night of all the nation, of all the people, 
soldiers and civilians, there is one name that welds us 
all into one, it is the name of American citizen, under 
the Union and under the glory of the flag that led us to 
victory and to peace. [Applause.] For this magnificent 
welcome, I thank you with all there is in my heart." 

Loud cheers were then given for General Garfield as 
he retired from the platform, and his place was taken by 
other speakers. 

Upon the adjournment of Congress, General Garfield 
returned to his home at ISIentor. 

The Fourth of July falling on Sunday, the citizens of 
Lake County celebrated the third in its place, and on 
that day dedicated, at Painesville, their beautiful monu- 
ment to the memory of the soldiers of the district who 
fell in defence of the Union. General Garfield was the 
orator of the day. He said : 

" Fellow-Citizens : I cannot fail to respond on such 
an occasion, in sight of such a monument to such a cause, 
sustained by such men. [Applause and cheers.] While 
I have listened to what my friend has said, two questions 
have been sweeping through my heart. One was ' What 
does the monument mean ? ' and the other ' What will 
the monument teach ? ' Let me try and ask you for a 
moment to help me to answer What does the monument 
mean ? Oh, the monument means a world of memories 
and a world of deeds, and a world of tears, and a world of 
glories. You know, thousands know, what it is to offer 
up your life to the country, and that is no small thing, 
as every soldier knows. Let me put the question to you 
for a moment. 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 505 

" Suppose your countr}', in the awfully embodierl 
form of majestic law, should stand above you and say, ' I 
want your life ; come up here on the platform and offer 
it,'— how many would walk up before that majestic pres- 
ence and say, ' Here I am ; take this life and use it for 
your great needs ? ' [Applause.] And yet almost two 
million of men made that answer [Applause], and a 
monument stands yonder to commemorate their answer. 
That is one of its meanings. But, my friends, let me try 
you a little farther. To give up life is much, for it is 
to give up wife and home and child and ambition. But 
let me test you this way farther. Suppose this awfully 
majestic form should call out to you and say, ' I ask you 
to give up health and drag yourself, not dead, but half 
alive, through a miserable existence for long years, until 
you perish and die in your crippled and helpless con- 
dition. I ask you to volunteer to do that.' It calls for 
a higher reach of patriotism and self-sacrifice, but hun- 
dreds of thousands of you soldiers did that. That is 
what the movement means also. But let me ask you to 
go one step farther. Suppose your country should sa}^, 
' Come Here on this platform, and in my name and for 
my sake consent to be idiots. [A voice — " Hear, hear ! "] 
Consent that your very brain and intellect shall be bro- 
ken down into hopeless idiocy for my sake, — how many 
could be found to make that venture ? And yet thou- 
sands, and that with their eyes wide open to the horrible 
consequences, obeyed that call. 

" And let me tell how 100,000 of our soldiers were 
prisoners of war, and many of them, when death was 
stalking near, when famine was climbing up into their 



506 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

hearts, and idiocy was threatening all that was left of 
their intellect, the gates of their prison stood open every 
day if they would quit, desert their flag, and enlist under 
the flag of the enemy; and, out of 180,000, not two 
per cent, ever received the liberation from death, star- 
vation, idiocy, all that might come to them ; but they took 
all these horrors and all these sufferings in preference to 
going back upon the flag of their country and the glory 
of its truth. [Applause.] Great God ! was ever such 
measure of patriotism reached by any man on this earth 
before? [Applause.] That is what your monument 
means. By the subtle chemistry that no man knows, 
all the blood that w\as shed by our brethren, all the 
lives that were devoted, all the grief that was felt, at 
last crystallized itself into granite, rendered immortal 
the great truth for which they died — [applause], — and it 
stands there to-day ; and that is what your monument 
means. 

"Now, what does it teach? What will it teach? 
Why, I remember the story of one of the old conquerors 
of Greece who, when he had travelled in his boyhood over 
the battle-fields where Miltiades had won victories, and 
set up trophies — returning, he said : ' These trophies of 
Miltiades will never let me sleep.' Why? Something 
had taught him from the chiselled stone a lesson that he 
could never forget. And, fellow-citizens, that silent sen- 
tinel, that crowned granite column, will look down upon 
the boys that will walk these streets for generations to 
come, and will not let them sleep when the country 
calls them. From the dead lips of the bugler on the 
field will go out a call that the children of Lake County 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 507 

will hear after the grave has covered us all and our im- 
mediate children. That is the teaching of your monu- 
ment. That is its lesson, and it is the lesson of endur- 
ance for what we believe, and it is the lesson of sacrifices 
for what we think ; the lesson of heroism for what we 
mean to sustain ; and that lesson cannot be lost to a peo- 
ple like this. It is not a lesson of revenge ; it is not a 
lesson of wrath ; it is the grand, sweet, broad lesson of 
the immortality of the truth that we hope will soon 
cover, as with the grand shekinah of light and glory, 
all parts of this Republic from the lakes to the gulf. 
[Applause.] 

" I once entered a house in old Massachusetts, where 
over its doors were two crossed swords. One was the 
sword carried by the grandfather of its owner on the 
field of Bunker Hill, and the other was the sword carried 
by the English grandsire of the wife on the same field 
and on the other side of the conflict. Under those 
crossed swords, in the restored harmony of domestic 
pence, lived a happy and contented and free family un- 
der the light of our Republican liberties. [Applause.] I 
trust the time is not>far distant when under the crossed 
swords and the locked shields of Americans, North and 
South, our people shall sleep in peace and rise in liberty, 
love, and harmony under the union of one flag of the 
stars and stripes." (Applause.) 

After a short rest at his home, General Garfield for- 
warded to Senator Hoar, the chairman of the Chicago 
Convention, the following formal letter of acceptance of 
his nomination by that body for the Presidency of the 
United States : 



508 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

" Mentor, Ohio, July 10, 1880. 
" Dear Sir : — On the evening of the 8th of June last 
I had the honor to receive from you, in presence of the 
committee of which you were chairman, the official an- 
nouncement that the Republican National Convention at 
Chicago had that day nominated me for their candidate 
for President of the United States. I accept the nomi- 
nation with gratitude for the confidence it implies, and 
with a deep sense of the responsibilities it imposes. I 
cordially endorse the principles set forth in the platform 
adopted by the convention ; on nearly all of the subjects 
of which it treats my opinions are on record among the 
published proceedings of Congress. I venture, however, 
to make special mention of some of the principal topics 
which are likely to become subjects of discussion without 
reviewing the controversies which have been settled dur- 
ing the last twenty years, and with no purpose or wish to 
revive the passions of the late war. It should be said 
that while Republicans fully recognize and will strenu- 
ously defend all the rights retained by the people and all 
the rights reserved to the States, they reject the per- 
nicious doctrine of State supremacy, which so long crip- 
pled the functions of the National Government, and at 
one time brought the Union very near to destruction. 
They insist that the United States is a nation, with am- 
ple power of self preservation ; that its constitution and 
laws made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of 
the land ; that the right of the nation to determine the 
method by which its own legislation shall be created, 
cannot be surrendered without abdicating one of the fun- 
damental powers of the Government ; that the national 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 509 

laws relating to the election of representatives in Con- 
gress shall neither be violated or evaded; that every 
elector shall be permitted freely and without intimidation 
to cast his lawful ballot at such election, and have it hon- 
estly counted, and that the potency of his vote shall not 
be destroyed by the fraudulent vote of any other person. 
" The best thoughts and energies of our people should 
be directed to those great questions of national well-being 
in which all have common interest. Such efforts will 
soonest restore perfect peace to those who were lately 
in arms against each other, for justice and good-will 
will outlast passion, but it is certain that the wounds 
cannot be completely healed and the spirit of brother- 
hood cannot fully pervade the whole country until every 
citizen, rich or poor, white or black, is secure in the free 
and unqualified enjoyment of every civil and political 
right guaranteed by the constitution and the laws. 
Wherever the enjoyment of this right is not assured, 
discontent will prevail, immigration will cease, and the 
social and industrial forces will continue to be disturbed 
by the migration of laborers and the consequent dimi- 
nution of prosperity. The National Government should 
exercise all its constitutional authority to put an end to 
these evils, for all the people and all the States are mem- 
bers of one body, and no member can suffer without in- 
jury to all. The most serious evils which now afflict the 
South arise from the fact that there is not such freedom 
and toleration of political opinion and action that the 
minority party can exercise an effective and wholesome 
restraint upon the party in power. Without such re- 
straint party rule becomes tyrannical and corrupt. The 



510 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

prosperity which is made possible in the South by its 
great advantages of soil and climate, will never be real- 
ized until every voter can freely and safely support any 
party he pleases. 

" Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular 
education, without which neither justice nor freedom can 
be permanently maintained. Its interests are entrusted 
to the States, and the involuntary action of the people. 
Whatever help the nation can justly afford should be 
generously given to aid the States in supporting common 
schools,' but it would be unjust to our people and danger- 
ous to our institutions to apply any portion of the rev- 
enues of the nation or of the States to the support of 
sectarian schools. The separation of the Church and the 
State in everything relating to taxation should be abso- 
lute. On the subject of national finances my views have 
been so frequently and fully expressed that little is 
needed in the way of additional statement. The public 
debt is now so well secured, and the rate of annual in- 
terest has been so reduced, by refunding that rigid econ- 
omy in expenditures and the faithful application of our 
surplus revenues to the payment of the principal of the 
debt will gradually but certainly free the people from its 
burdens and close with honor the financial chapter of 
the war. At the same time the Government can provide 
for all its ordinary expenditures, and discharge its sacred 
obligations to the soldier of the Union and to the widows 
and orphans of those who fell in its defence. 

" The resumption of specie payments, which the Re- 
publican party so courageously and successfully acccom- 
plished, has removed from the field of controversy many 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 511 

questions that long and seriously disturbed the credit of 
the Government and the business of the country. Our 
paper currency is now as national as the flag, and re- 
sumption has not only made it everywhere equal to 
coin, but has brought into use our store of gold and sil- 
ver. The circulating medium is more abundant than 
ever before, and we need only to maintain the equality 
of all our dollars to insure to labor and capital a measure 
of value, from the use of which no one can suffer loss. 
The great prosperity which the country is now enjoy- 
ing should not be endangered by any violent changes or 
doubtful financial experiments. In reference to our 
customs laws a policy should be pursued which will 
bring revenues to the Treasury, and will enable the labor 
and capital employed in our great industries to compete 
fairly in our own markets with the labor and capital of 
foreign producers. We legislate for the people of the 
United States, not for the whole world, and it is our 
glory that the American laborer is more intelligent and 
better paid than his foreign competitor. Our country 
cannot be independent unless its people, with their 
abundant natural resources, possess the requisite skill 
at any time to clothe, arm, and equip themselves for war, 
and in time of peace to produce all the necessary im- 
plements of labor. It was the manifest intention of the 
founders of the government to provide for the common 
defence, not by standing armies alone, but by raising 
among the people a greater army of artisans whose in- 
telligence and skill should powerfully contribute to the 
safely and glory of the nation. 

" Fortunately for the interests of commerce there is 



512 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

no longer any formidable opposition to appropriations for 
the improvement of our harbors and great navigable 
rivers, provided that the expenditures for that purpose 
are strictl}- limited to works of national importance. The 
Mississippi River, with its great tributaries, is of such vital 
importance to so many millions of people that the safety 
of its navigation requires exceptional consideration. In 
order to secure to the nation the control of all its waters, 
President Jefferson negotiated the purchase of a vast ter- 
ritory extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific 
Ocean. The wisdom of Congress should be invoked to 
devise some plan by which that great river shall cease to 
be a terror to those who dwell upon its banks, and by 
which its shipping may safely carry the industrial pro- 
ducts of twenty-five millions of people. The interests of 
agriculture, which is the basis of all our material prosper- 
ity, and in which seven-twelfths of our population are en- 
gaged, as well as the interests of manufactures and com- 
merce, demand that the facilities for cheap transportation 
shall be increased by the use of all our great water- 
courses. The material interests of this country, the tra- 
ditions of its settlement and the sentiment of our people 
have led the Government to offer the widest hospitality 
to emigrants who seek our shores for new and happier 
homes, willing to share the burdens as well as the bene- 
fits of our society, and intending that their posterity shall 
become an undistinguishable part of our population. 

" The recent movement of the Chinese to our Pacific 
Coast partakes but little of the qualities of such an emi- 
gTation, either in its purposes or its result. It is too 
much like an importation to be welcomed without restric- 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 513 

tion ; too much like an invasion to be looked upon with- 
out solicitude. We cannot consent to allow any form of 
servile labor to be introduced among us under the guise 
of immigration. Reeogni:^ing the gravity of this subject, 
the present administration, supported by Congress, has 
sent to China a commission of distinguished citizens for 
the purpose of securing such a modification of the exist- 
ing treaty as will prevent the evils likely to arise from 
the present situation. It is confidently believed that 
fhese diplomatic negotiations will be successful without 
the loss of commercial intercourse between the two great 
powers, which promises a great increase of reciprocal 
trade and the enlargement of our markets. Should these 
efforts fail, it will be the duty of Congress to mitigate 
the evils already felt, and prevent their increase by such 
restrictions as, without violence or injustice, will place 
upon a sure foundation the peace of our communities and 
the freedom and dignity of labor. 

" The appointment of citizens to the various executive 
and judicial offices of the Government is, perhaps, the 
most difficult of all duties which the constitution has im- 
posed upon the executive. The convention wisely de- 
mands that Congress shall co-operate with the ^executive 
departments in placing the civil service on a better basis. 
Experience has proved that, with our frequent changes of 
administration, no system of reform can be made effective 
and permanent without the aid of legislation. Appoint- 
ments to the military and naval service are so regulated 
by law and custom as to leave but little ground of com- 
plaint. It may not be wise to make similar regulations 
by law for civil service, but without invading the author- 

33 



514 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ity or necessary discretion of the executive, Congress 
should devise a method that will determine the tenure of 
office, and greatly reduce the uncertainty which makes 
that service so uncertain and unsatisfactory. Without 
depriving any officer of his rights, as a citizen, the Gov- 
ernment should require him to discharge all his official 
duties with intelligence, efficiency, and faithfulness. 

" To select wisely from our vast population those who 
are best fitted for the many offices to be filled requires an 
acqujiintance far beyond the range of any one man. The 
executive should therefore seek and receive the informa- 
tion and assistance of those whose knowledge of the com- 
munities in which the duties are to be performed best 
qualifies them to aid in making the wisest choice. The 
doctrines announced by the Chicago Convention are not 
the temporary devices of a party to attract votes and 
carry an election. They are deliberate convictions result- 
ing from a careful study of the spirit of our institutions, 
the events of our history, and the best impulses of our 
people. In my judgment, these principles should control 
the legislation and administration of the Government. In 
any event they will guide my conduct until experience 
points out a better way. If elected, it will be my purpose 
to enforce strict obedience to the constitution and the 
laws, and to promote as best I may the interest and honor 
of the whole country, relying for support upon the wisdom 
of Congress, the intelligence and patriotism of the people, 
and the favor of God. 

" With great respect, I am, very truly yours, 
"To Hon. George F.HOAK, " J. A. Gakpield." 

Chairman of the Committee." 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 615 

We have now traced the career of General Garfield 
from his birth to his formal acceptance of the nomination 
of his party for the Presidency. It is a grand career, 
and builds up a noble and powerful example to the young 
men of his country. Here we must leave him. That he 
will be triumphantly seated in the Presidential chair 
none who have read this narrative can doubt ; and that 
his administration will be pure and grand is a certainty. 

In person General Garfield is six feet high, broad- 
shouldered, and strongly built. He has an unusually 
large head, that seems to be three-fourths forehead, light 
brown hair and beard, large light blue eyes, a prominent 
nose and full cheeks. He dresses plainly, is fond of 
broad-brimmed slouch hats and stout boots, eats heartily, 
cares nothing for luxurious living, is thoroughly temper- 
ate in all respects save in that of brain-work, and is 
devoted to his wife and children, and very fond of his 
country home. Among men he is genial, approachable, 
companionable, and a remarkably entertaining talker. • 

General Garfield is the possessor of two homes, and 
his family migrates twice a year. On the corner of Thir- 
teenth and I streets stands his Washington home. It 
is a very modest and unpretentious mansion of brick, 
plain and square built, after the manner of its distin- 
guished owner and occupant. Above it, to the north, 
towers the palatial Franklin school building. On the 
west is that lovely stretch of rolling turf and shade and 
shrubbery known as Franklin Square. The residences in 
the immediate vicinity denote a respectable but by no 
means fashionable neighborhood. The house is square, 
with a wing on the east, comprisiLg dining-room and 



516 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

library. The parlor side-wind ows look out on the pleas- 
ing prospect of the park, while the front commands a 
corner view of I and Thirteenth streets. 

Above all other places of interest in this house, how- 
ever, is the library. Here is the working-ground of a 
man of energy and ideas ; here the student and scholar 
lives and has being in the exclusion of the man ; hero 
the statesman and politician takes nourishment and 
flourishes. The room is about twenty-five by fourteen 
feet, three windows opening south on I street, one to the 
east. The pattern carpet leaves about three feet of 
stained floor about the margin. In the centre and under 
the heavy chandelier is a double walnut office-desk, with 
an addition of pigeon-holes and boxes and drawers on the 
end. There is an air of legal brusqueness everywhere, 
of orderly disorder, as if the owner cared less for general 
symmetry than for immediate convenience. Half a dozen 
bookcases occupy the available space against the walls, 
and two or three thousand books freight their shelves. 
No two of these cases are alike, of the same height, width 
or make. It is as if the accumulation had from time to 
time overflown the limit of book-room and another case 
had been hastily procured in which to store the surplus, 
and then, when that was full, another was added, and so 
on. Books, books, books ! It is the one striking feature 
of Mr. Garfield's home. They confront one in the hall 
upon entering, in the parlor and sitting-room and in the 
dining-room — yes, and even in the bath-room, where 
documents and speeches are corded up like firewood. I 
would not be at all surprised if a fair library could be 
discovered in the kitchen. Among all these books there 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 517 

is not a trashy volume. They are law and history, 
biography, poetry, politics, philosophy, government, and 
standard works of all sorts, the accumulation of years 
of study and the patient research of the scholar. And 
these are but a portion of Mr. Garfield's collection, a con- 
siderable one being at his country home in Ohio. 

Five or six years ago the little cottage at Hiram was 
sold, and for a time the only residence the Garfields had 
in his district was a summer house he built on Little 
Mountain, a bold elevation in Lake County, which com- 
mands a view of thirty miles of rich farming country 
stretched along the shore of Lake Erie. Three years 
ago he bought a farm in Mentor, in the same county, 
lying on both sides of the Lake Shore and Michigan 
Southern Railroad. Here his family spend all the time 
when he is free from his duties at Washington, The 
farm contains about one hundred and twenty acres of 
excellent land, in a high state of cultivation, and the 
Congressman finds a recreation, of which he never tires, 
in directing the field-work and making improvements in 
the buildings, fences, and orchards. Cleveland is only 
twenty-five miles away ; there is a post office and a rail- 
way station within half a mile, and the pretty country 
town of Painesville is but five miles distant. One of the 
pleasures of summer life on the Garfield farm is a drive 
of two miles through the woods to the lake shore and 
a bath in the breakers. 

On this farm General Garfield has built him a new 
house, which attracts considerable attention and much 
curiosity from passers by on the Lake Shore Railroad. 
It cannot be called grand in any sense of the word, but 



518 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

it will be a pleasant and very convenient country house, 
superior to the majority along this section of the Ridge 
road. It is generally of the Gothic style of architecture, 
but mingled with other styles, so as to form what con- 
tractors term a " mixture." A roomy porch extends 
along the front and part of the side tow^ard Cleveland. 
Lattice work has been arranged in front for training 
vines. The house is sixty feet front by fifty deep and 
two stories and a half high. The apartments are all 
roomy for a country house, and the wide hallway attracts 
attention the first thing on entering. General Garfield 
has marked that section of the plan where the pantry is 
located, " Plenty of shelves and drawers," and in the 
rear part of the second floor of the diagram is written 
" Snuggery for the general." The last mentioned room 
is rather small, measuring only 13^ feet by 14 feet. It 
is to be fitted up with book-shelves, but Garfield will 
still continue to use as his library the detached building 
erected a year or two since in the yard northeast of the 
house. 

Two of the best apartments in the eastern and 
front part of the edifice are being especially fitted up 
for occupancy by Mrs. Garfield, the mother of the gen- 
eral. The front room has a large old-fashioned fireplace, 
and the pains taken to make everything comfortable 
here plainly show the tender feelings of the son for the 
aged mother. Dr. Robinson noticed the admiration of 
the writer for this room, and said : " The general thinks 
everything of his mother. You know he chopped a 
hundred cords of wood once for $25, and took the money 
home to her." 



SINCE THE CONVENTION. 519 

There are few of the timbers of the old house (over 
which the new has been constructed) now visible, and 
probably there will be none in sight when the carpets are 
put down. The cost of the structure will be, when fin- 
ished, between $3,e500 and $4,000. This is remarkably 
slight, when the expense of bringing such workmen as 
were wanted so far away from the city is considered. 
The work has been hurried forward with rapidity, par- 
ticularly within the last few weeks, as it was intended to 
get it as nearly finished as possible before the general's 
return from Washington previous to going to the Chicago 
Convention. Mrs. Garfield was really the architect of 
the house. A man in Cleveland drew a slight sketch, 
and Mrs. Garfield filled it out, the general marking in 
various directions with bold strokes of the pen. When 
the ideas of the wife had been put on paper the general 
wrote the following underneath, as a gentle hint to the 
builders : 

" These plans must stand as above, unless otherwise 
ordered hereafter. If any part of them is impracticable, 
inform me soon and suggest change. 

"J. A. Garfield." 
" Washington, March 6, 1880." 

The general has never been proud or " stuck up," 
the neighbors say, although they thought he might be- 
come so when he first moved among them. His wife 
they characterize as a " perfect lady," who, however, is 
not afraid of work. 

General Garfield has five children living, and has lost 
two, who died in infancy. The two elder boys, Harry 



620 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

and James, are now at school in New Hampshire. Mary, 
or Molly, as everybody calls her, is a handsome, rosy- 
cheeked girl of about twelve. The two younger boys are 
named Irwin and Abram. The general's mother is still 
living, and has long been a member of his family. She is 
an intelligent, energetic old lady, with a clear head and a 
strong will, who keeps well posted in the news of the day, 
and is very proud of her son's career, though more liberal 
of criticism than of praise. 

General Garfield's district lies in the extreme north- 
eastern corner of Ohio, and now embraces the counties of 
Ashtabula, Trumbull, Geauga, Lake, and Mahoning. His 
old home county of Portage was detached from it a year 
ago. With the exception of the coal and iron regions in 
the extreme southern part, the district is purely a rural 
one and is inhabited by a population of pure New Eng- 
land ancestry. It is claimed that there is less illiteracy 
in proportion to the population than in any other district 
in the United States. 



THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES 



GEN. CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 



CHAPTER L 

Birth and Parentage — College Life — Teaches a Country School — Studies 
Law — Admitted to Practice — Settles in New York — Marries the Daugh- 
ter of a Hero — Defends two Fugitive Slaves — Carries his Case to a Tri- 
umphant Issue — Appointed Engineer-in-Chief of Governor Morgan's 
Staff— An Honorable Record— Refuses to accept Presents for his Public 
Services— His Record on Civil Service Reform — Made Collector of the 
Port of New York — Puts a stop to Frauds upon the Government, — At- 
tempts to fasten Charges of Fraud upon Him are Unsuccessful — Re 
moved from Office by President Hayes — Offered the post of Consul 
General to Paris — Refuses it — Personal Appearance— Nominated for 
Vice-President — His Letter of Acceptance. 

Chester A. Arthur, was born in Franklin County, Ver- 
mont, on the 5th of October, 1830. He is the oldest of 
a family of two sons and five daughters. His father, the 
Rev. Dr. William Arthur, a Baptist clergyman, emigrated 
from the County of Antrim, in Ireland, to this country, 
in his eighteenth year, and died in Newtonville, near 
Albany, New York, October 27, 1875. General Arthur 
was educated at Union College, and was graduated 
in the class of '49. After leaving college he taught a 
country school during two years in Vermont, and then, 



522 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

having managed by rigid economy to save about |500, be 
started for New York, and entered the law office of ex- 
Judge E. D. Culver as a student. After being admitted 
to the bar, he formed a partnership with his friend, Henry 
D. Gardiner, with the intention of practising in the West, 
but in the end they returned to New York, where they 
entered upon a successful career almost from the start. 
General Arthur soon afterwards married the daughter of 
Lieutenant Herndon, United States Navy, who was lost 
at sea. Mrs. Arthur died only a short time ago. 

In 1852, Jonathan and Juliet Lemmon, Virginian 
slaveholders, intending to emigrate to -Texas, came to 
New York to await the sailing of a steamer, bringing 
eight slaves with them. A writ of habeas corpus was 
obtained from Judge Pnine to test the question whether 
the provisions of the Fugitive Slave law were in force in 
New York State. Judge Paine rendered a decision hold- 
ing that they were not, and ordering the Lemmon slaves 
to be liberated. Henry L. CHnton was one of the counsel 
for the slaveholders. A howl of rage went up from the 
South, and the Virginia legislature authorized the Attor- 
ney-General of that State to assist in taking an appeal. 
William M. Evarts and Chester A. Arthur were employed 
to represent the people, and they won their case, which 
then went to the Supreme Court of the United States. 
Charles O'Conor espoused the cause of the slaveholders, 
but he, too, was beaten by Messrs. Evarts and Arthur, 
and a long step was taken towards the emancipation of 
the black race. Another great service was rendered by 
General Arthur in the same cause in 1856. Lizzie Jen- 
nings, a respectable colored woman, was put off a New 



LIFE AND SERVICES. 523 

York street-car with violence, after she had paid her fare. 
General Arthur sued on her behalf, and secured a verdict 
of $500 damages. The next day the company issued an 
order to permit colored persons to ride on their cars, and 
the other car companies quickly followed their example. 

General Arthur, previous to the outbreak of the war, 
was Judge-Advocate of the 2d Brigade of the New York 
State Militia, and Governor Edwin D. Morgan, soon after 
his inauguration, selected him to fill the position of Engi- 
neer-in-Chief of his staff. In 1861 he held the post of 
Inspector-General, and soon afterward was advanced to 
that of Quarte-rmaster-General, which he held until the 
expiration of Morgan's term of office. No higher en- 
comium can be passed upon him than the mention of 
the fact that, although the war account of the State of 
New York was at least ten times larger than that of any 
other State, yet it was the first audited and allowed in 
Washington, and without the deduction of a dollar, while 
the Quartermaster's accounts from other States were 
reduced from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000. During his 
term of office every present sent to him was immedi- 
ately returned. Among others, a prominent clothing 
house offered him a magnificent uniform, and a printing 
house sent him a costly saddle and trappings. Both 
gifts were indignantly rejected. When Mr. Arthur be- 
came Quartermaster- General he was poor. When his 
term expired he was poorer still. He had opportuni- 
ties to make millions unquestioned. Contracts larger 
than the world had ever seen were at his disposal. He 
had to provide for the clothing, arming, and transporta- 
tion of hundred of thousands of men His own words 



524 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

in regard to this matter amply illustrate his character. 
"If I had misappropriated five cents, and on walking 
down town saw two men talking on the corner together, 
I would imagine they were talking of my dishonesty, 
and the very thought would drive me mad." 

At the expiration of Governor Morgan's term, Ar- 
thur returned to his law practice. Business of the most 
lucrative character poured in upon him, and the firm 
of Arthur & Gardiner prospered exceedingly. Much of 
their work consisted in the collection of war claims and 
the drafting of important bills for speedy legislation, 
and a great deal of General Arthur's time was spent in 
Albany and Washington, where his success won for him 
a national reputation. For a short time he held the 
position of counsel to the Board of Tax Commissioners 
of New York city, at $10,000 per annum. Gradually he 
was drawn into the arena of politics. He nominated, 
and by his efforts elected, the Hon. Thomas Murphy a 
State Senator. When the latter resigned the collector- 
ship of the port of New York, November 20, 1871, 
President Grant nominated General Arthur to the vacant 
position, and four years later, when his term expired, 
renominated him, an honor that hud never been shown 
to any previous collector in the history of the port. In 
a letter written to the Secretary of the Treasury, in the 
winter of 1877, after the New York Custom House In- 
vestigating Committee had finished their labors, General 
Arthur said : 

" The subject of civil service reform and the modes 
of appointment to office is that to which the commission 
gives most attention. The essential elements of a secret 



LIFE AND SERVICES. 525 

civil service I understand to be first, permanence in 
office, which, of course, prevents removals except for 
cause ; second, promotion from the lower to the higher 
grades, based upon good conduct and efficiency; third, 
prompt and thorough investigation of all complaints, and 
prompt punishment of all misconduct. In the face of 
the misstatements of the commission, and in spite of 
persistent misrepresentations, I claim that the adminis- 
tration of my office has been characterized by the ob- 
servance of all these. In this respect I challenge com- 
parison with any department of the Government, and 
maintain that civil service reform has been more faith- 
fully observed, and more thoroughly carried out, in the 
New York Custom House than in any other branch or 
department of the Government, either under the present 
or under any past national administration. I am pre- 
pared to demonstrate the truth of this statement on any 
fair investigation." He did demonstrate it absolutely 
from figures and statistics taken from the records of the 
Custom House, and his letter was unanswerable and has 
been unanswered. He showed that during his term of 
over six years in office*the percentage of removals was 
only 2f against an annual average of 28 per cent, under 
his three immediate predecessors, and an annual average 
of about 24 per cent, since 1857, when Collector Schell 
took office. Of the 923 persons in office prior to his 
appointment, 531 were still retained on May 1, 1877. 
As to promotions. Collector Arthur gave statistics which 
proved that during his whole term the uniform practice 
was to advance men from the lower "to the higher grades, 
and almost without exception on the recommendation of 



526 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

the heads of bureaus. All appointments except two to 
the 100 positions commanding salaries of $2,000 per 
year, were made on this plan, and none at all at the in- 
stance of outsiders. No such civil service was ever 
maintained in any other government bureau in the 
country. It also appeared from the statistics and history 
of the Custom House, as quoted in the collector's letters, 
a great number of improvements were introduced during 
his administration ; in fact, that a constant series of 
reforms were being put into practice. In this connec- 
tion General Arthur said : " It is not my purpose here 
to enumerate them all, but I may call your attention to 
some. The general order system, so called, had been for 
more than a quarter of a century a constant subject of 
complaint by the merchants, of investigation by Con- 
gress, and of alleged corruption. Since the changes in 
the system and in the charges for storage introduced five 
years ago, no whisper of complaint has been heard. By 
a change in the system of ordering goods for examina- 
tion, the methods of fraud and corruption by which the 
Government had lost large sums has been effectually 
checked. By another change triplicate consular invoices 
have been for the first time rendered of some value, and 
frauds in the suppression of invoices and the procure- 
ment of appraisement orders, so called, have been stopped. 
Fraud or misconduct under the former system led to the 
removal of six or eight officers of the Appraiser's Depart- 
ment. The introduction of a system by which prompt 
notice is given to merchants of refunds of duties has 
saved them from imposition and delay in the receipt of 
moneys due. A change in the liquidating department 



LIFB AND SERVICES. 527 

has reduced the time needed for the liquidation of en- 
tries from months to weeks. Only importers can appre- 
ciate the value of this change. The efficiency of the 
bureau in charge of the public store has been so in- 
creased that the complaints of petty pilfering and delays 
have almost ceased. And in general the efficiency of the 
entire force, including that immediately under the con- 
trol of the surveyor, has been so increased as to be 
greater than at any previous period." 

The New York Custom House, during General Ar- 
thur's administration, was the best investigated place in 
the country, but every attempt to find a flaw resulted 
the same. It came out from each ordeal without a single 
breath of allegation against its head. It may be that 
these attempts were made because Collector Arthur stood 
up so steadfastly for his people. When new administra- 
tions come into power, and there are new crowds of 
office seekers to satisfy, there is apt under such circum- 
stances to be some jarring. It is a fact that the only at- 
tempts at violation of the civil service rules were made, 
not by him, but from Washington. An examination of 
the Custom House files would reveal many letters from 
Washington, accompanied by the strongest recommenda- 
tions, urging the appointment of their bearers to various 
positions in the New York Custom House, from that of 
Deputy Collector down. These efforts to violate his sys- 
tem of civil service reform were steadily withstood by 
Collector Arthur. 

General Arthur was admirably fitted to discuss the 
legal questions continually arising under the manifold 
revenue laws, and it was his constant habit at the close 



528 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

of each day's business to carefully go over and settle the 
many points raised in the correspondence bureau, and by 
application from merchants. The New York Custom 
House thus became under his management a reference 
not only of the Treasury Department, but of nearly all 
the other Custom Houses in the country, and perhaps no 
more instructive school could be found than the one 
where the revenue laws were, under his supervision, daily 
interpreted. 

General Arthur was removed by President Hayes on 
July 12, 1878, despite the fact that two special commit- 
tees made searching investigation into his administration, 
and both reported themselves unable to find anything 
upon which to base a charge against him. In their pro- 
nunciamentos announcing the change, both President 
Hayes and Secretary Sherman bore official witness to the 
purity of his acts while in office. A petition for his re- 
tention was signed by every judge of every court in New 
York, by all the prominent members of the bar, and by 
nearly every important merchant in the collection dis- 
trict, but this General Arthur himself suppressed. Im- 
mediately upon his removal from the New York collec- 
torship, General Arthur was offered by President Hayes 
the Consul-Generalship at Paris. In a letter acknowl- 
edging the tender of the office. General Arthur expressed 
his appreciation of the compliment, and his regret that 
his private interests were in such a condition that he 
could not accept it. 

In person General Arthur is over six feet in height, 
broad-shouldered, athletic, and handsome. He is an 
ardent disciple of Izaak Walton and a member of the 



LIFE AND SERVICES. 529 

Restigouche Salmon Fishing Club. He is a man of great 
culture and wide experience, an able lawyer, with refined 
tastes, and manners of the utmost geniality. 

Although General Arthur's prominence in the party 
was so great, it was not generally supposed that he would 
receive either nomination. After the nomination of Gen- 
eral Garfield on the 8th of June, the convention ad- 
journed until the afternoon. 

The convention began to reassemble at five o'clock. 

On the chairman's table stood a large floral eflSgy of 
a full-rigged ship floating on a sea of color, in which the 
name of Garfield was worked in scarlet flowers. 

The convention was called to order at 5.30. Lum- 
bard's male quartet, of Chicago, opened the proceedings 
with the song " My Country 'tis of Thee," eliciting much 
apphiuse and a recall, to which they responded by giving 
the comic negro campaign song known as " Old Shady." 

When the music ceased Mr. Geary, of Maryland, 
moved that the convention proceed to receive the nomi- 
nation for a candidate for Vice-President. Adopted. 

On California being called, Mr. Pixley rose to put in 
nomination by his own delegation a nominee for the sec- 
ond place on the ticket. He commended the nomination 
of Garfield as a strong one, and urged the importance of 
nominating an equally strong man for the second place. 
He named Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, whose career 
in Congress was most creditable, and to whose wise, hu- 
mane, and manly course in Paris during the Commune the 
speaker was an eye-witness, a man whose conduct on that 
occasion should and would draw to the ticket on which 
he is placed the great mass of the German vote. 

34 



530 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

While Mr. Pixley was speaking, Mr. Logan was 
seen talking to the Ohio delegation, apparently in ex- 
cited remonstrance against their support of the Wash- 
burne movement. 

Mr. McCarthy, of New York, seconded Washburne's 
nomination, but the confusion rendered his utterance 
nearly unintelligible at the reporters' seats. He was un- 
derstood, however, to eulogize Washburne's career both at 
home and abroad, and elicited a cordial and hearty ap- 
plause from the galleries. 

Mr. Robinson, of Connecticut, presented the name of 
Marshall Jewell, of that State. 

Mr. Hicks, of Florida, after an earnest presentation 
of the sufferings of Republicans in the South, because 
they had the courage of their convictions, presented the 
name of Thomas Settle, of Florida [applause], whose 
nomination would help to break the solid South. 

Mr. Harris, of North Carolina, a colored delegate, 
seconded Mr. Settle's nomination as one that would com- 
mand general approval in the South, because of his ser- 
vices to the Republican party, and his efforts to secure to 
all men their equal rights before the law. He was the 
sledge-hammer with which to break the backbone of 
the solid South. 

Mr. Conger, of Michigan, in accordance with the 
unanimous vote of the Michigan State Convention, said 
he would have been glad to present the name of Thomas 
W. Ferry, but he had a letter from the senator abso- 
lutely declining the use of his name, and he asked to 
have it received and made part of the record. Agreed to. 

Mr. Houck, of Tennessee, in obedience to the Repub- 



LIFE AND SERVICES. 531 

lican convention of that State, and the common senti- 
ment of the Republicans of the South, put in nomination 
Plorace Majnard, of Tennessee. 

Mr. Frye was called to the chair. 

Mr. Woodford, of New York, said the great majority 
of the delegates from New York came here with the 
earnest desire and purpose to secure the nomination of 
General Grant. In this they had been disappointed, but 
would give the ticket hearty support. In behalf of many 
of the New York delegation, he presented the name of 
Chester A, Arthur, of New York, for Vice-President. 

Mr. Dennison, of Ohio, seconded Arthur's nomination. 
He embraced the occasion briefly, in the name of the 
Ohio delegation, to thank the convention for their action 
in nominating General Garfield. 

The chairman read a telegram from Oregon to dele- 
gate Scott, announcing that the Republicans carried that 
State by 1,000 majority yesterday, and that Garfield's 
nomination excited great enthusiasm. 

Mr. Kilpatrick, of New Jersey, seconded Arthur's 
nomination as one well calculated to secure the vote of 
New York for the ticket. 

Mr. Storrs, of Illinois, on behalf of the majority 
of the Illinois delegation, supported Arthur's nomination, 
which would be gratifying to the old guard, which, dur- 
ing thirty-six ballots here, had never wavered in its sup- 
port of the silent old soldier. (Applause.) 

Mr. Lynch (colored), of Mississippi, said for the 
Southern Grant Republicans, that they willingly and 
heartily concurred in New York's choice, and hoped it 
would be ratified by the convention. 



632 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

A Mar}'land delegation also seconded Arthur's nom- 
ination, and said his delegation would sustain it with a 
solid vote. He regretted that he could not yet promise 
that Maryland would give a majority for the ticket in 
November next, but the nomination already made and 
the one proposed would give Maryland Republicans the 
best possible opportunity to battle for a political revolu- 
tion in that State. (Applause.) 

Mr. Filley, of Missouri, announced that his State 
would give thirty votes to Arthur. 

Mr. Chambers, of Texas, presented the name of ex- 
Governor Davis, of that State, and got a little excited by 
interruptions of those who called " Time " and " Ques- 
tion." Florida withdrew Settle in favor of Arthur. Mr. 
Cessna, of Pennsylvania, said his delegation was within 
two votes of a unit for Arthur. 

Mr. White, of Kentucky, said his delegation was a 
unit for Arthur. 

Mr. McCarthy, of New York, withdrew his second to 
Washburne's nomination, and moved that Arthur's nomi- 
nation be made by acclamation. 

The chair ruled that the roll must be called on this 
ballot, and that Mr. McCarthy's motion was out of order. 

Texas withdrew Mr. Davis's name. Mr. Hoar re- 
sumed the chair, and stated that it was in order to sus- 
pend the rules by a two-thirds vote. 

A 'delegate moved that the rules be suspended, and 
the nomination of Mr. Arthur be made by acclamation. 
The motion to suspend was lost. 

Roll was called on the ballot, which resulted as fol- 
lows : 



LIFE AND SERVICES. 



53S 



THE VICE-PKESIDENTIAL BALLOT. 
The following is the detailed vote for Vice-President: 



States. 


> 

20 
13 
12 

6 
12 

6 

8 
22 
42 
30 
22 
10 
24 
16 
14 
Hi 
26 
22 
10 
16 
30 

6 

6 
10 
1) 
70 
20 
44 

6 
58 

8 
14 
24 
16 
10 
22 
10 
20 

738 


K 

s 

CO 

< 


p 

18 
12 


> 


1 


i 

<-> 
2 


i 

a 


i 

03 


a 

< 

< 


1 






Arkansas 


























6 






















12 












'is' 
11 

22 


6 

8 
22 

24 
5 








Florida 
















































Indiana 






5 




2 










^ ■ ■ 


10 

24 
10 




















. . . . 












Louisiana 










4 






Maine 




14 








22' 
14 
2 

"q 

6 
3 

14 

"2' 

ii" 

8 


16 
2 
6 
8 
11 
30 














1 




'i 
































1 


















Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire . ... 
































3 

3 
69 
20 
42 

6 
47 






4 

1 










New Jersey 

New York 






























Ohio 
















































Rhode Island 


















14 




























24 




Texas 


5 
5 
2 
9 
16 

189 


9 
4 
19 
1 
2 

457 




































1 
















Wisconsin . . 










1 

8 


1 
30 






2 





41 


1 


4 











534 



CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 



Territories. 


O 
> 

2 
2 
2 
2 

2 
2 
2 
2 
2 

756 


1 

B 
n 

< 

189 


457 


2 


1 

1 


-i 

41 
2 


1 



§ 

1 


"8 




< 

>< 

< 

30 


P5 
-«1 


Broufifbt forward. . . . 


4 


Arizona 




Dakota 


.... 

2 

1 

193 


2 
1 








District of Columbia 
















Idaho 


















I 
2 
2 

1 
2 

468 
















New Mexico ... 
















Utah 








Washiufi'ton 






1 














Totals 


2 


1 


44 


1 


8 


30 


4 









Five delegates did not vote. 

Whole number of votes cast 751 

Necessary to a choice 376 



Washburne 193 

Jewell 44 

Settle 1 

Maynard 30 

Arthur 468 



Davis 2 

Woodford 1 

Bruce, of Mississippi 8 

Alcorn, of Mississippi 4 



Mr. Frye, in the chair, said that Mr. Arthur, having 
received a majority of all the votes cast, was the candi- 
date for Vice-President, and inquired, " Shall the nomi- 
nation be made unanimous ? " 

Mr. Haymond, of California, moved that it be made 
unanimous. 

Votes of thanks were then passed to the officers of 
the convention, and the usual committee of one from each 
State was authorized to apprise tlie candidates of their 
nominations, when the convention adjourned sine die. 

General Arthur was duly informed of his nomination, 
and accepted it in the following letter : 



LIFE AND SERVICES. 535 

" New York, July 15, 1880. 
" Dear Sir : — I accept the position assigned me by 
the great party whose action you announce. This accept- 
ance iiii plies approval of the principles declared by the 
Convention, but recent usage permits me to add some ex- 
pression of my own views. The right and duty to secure 
honesty and order in popular elections is a matter so vital 
that it must stand in front. The authority of the Na- 
tional Government to preserve from fraud and force elec- 
tions at which its own officers are chosen, is a chief point 
on which the two parties are plainly and intensely op- 
posed. Acts of Congress for ten years have, in New 
York and elsewhere, done much to curb the violence and 
wrong to which the ballot and the count have been again 
and again subjected — sometimes despoiling great cities 
sometimes stifling the voice of a whole State, often seat- 
ing, not only in Congress, but on the bench and in legis- 
latures, numbers of men never chosen by the people. 
The Democratic party since gaining possession of the two 
houses of Congress has made these just laws the object 
of bitter, ceaseless assault, and, despite all resistance, has 
hedged them with restrictions cunningly contrived to baf- 
fle and paralyze them. This aggressive majority boldly 
attempted to extort from the Executive his approval of 
various enactments destructive of these election laws by 
revolutionary threats that a constitutional exercise of the 
veto power would be punished by withholding the appro- 
priations necessary to carry on the Government. And 
these threats were actually carried out by refusing the 
needed appropriations, and by forcing an extra session 
of Congress, lasting for months, and resulting in conces- 



536 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

sions to this usurping demand, which are likely, in many 
States, to subject the majority to the lawless will of a 
minority. Ominous signs of public disapproval alone 
subdued' this arrogant power into a sullen surrender for 
the time being of a part of its demands. The Republican 
party has strongly approved the stern refusal of its repre- 
sentatives to suffer the overthrow of statutes believed to 
be salutary and just. It has always insisted, and now 
insists, that the Government of the United States of 
America is empowered and in duty bound to effectually 
protect the elections denoted by the Constitution as Na- 
tional. 

" More than this, the Republican party holds, as a 
cardinal point in its creed, that the Government should, 
by every means known to t!ie Constitution, protect all 
American citizens everywhere in the full enjoyment of 
their civil and political rights. As a great part of its 
work of reconstruction, the Republican party gave the 
ballot to the emancipated slave as his right and defence. 
A large increase in the number of members of Congress, 
and of the Electoral College, from the former slaveholding 
States, was the immediate result. The history of recent 
years abounds in evidence that in many ways and many 
places — especially where their number has been great 
enough to endanger Democratic control — the very men 
by whose elevation to citizenship this increase of repre- 
sentation was effected, have been debarred and robbed 
of their voice and their vote. It is true that no State 
statute or constitution in so many words denies or 
abridges the exercise of their political rights ; but the 
modes employed to bar their way are no less effectual. 



LIFE AND SERVICES. 537 

It is a suggestive and startling thought that the in- 
creased power derived from the enfranchisement of a race 
now denied its share in governing the country — wielded 
by those who lately sought the overthrow of the Govern- 
ment — is now the sole reliance to defeat the party which 
represented the sovereignty and nationality of the Ameri- 
can people in the greatest crisis of our history. Re- 
publicans cherish none of the resentments which may 
have animated them during the actual conflict of arms. 
They long for a full and real reconciliation between the 
sections which were needlessly and lamentably at strife ; 
they sincerely offer the hand of good- will, but they ask 
in return a pledge of good faith. They deeply feel that 
the party, whose career is so illustrious in g^eat and 
patriotic achievement, will not fulfil its destiny until 
peace and prosperity are established in all the land, nor 
until liberty of thought, conscience and action, and equal- 
ity of opportunity shall be not merely cold formalities of 
statute, but living birthrights, which the humble may 
confidently claim and the powerful dare not deny. 

" The resolution referring to the public service seems 
to be deserving of approval. Surely no man should be 
the incumbent of an office the duties of which he is, for 
any cause, unfit to perform, who is lacking in the ability, 
fidelity, or integrity which a proper administration of such 
office demands. This sentiment would doubtless meet 
with general acquiescence, but opinion has been widely 
divided upon the wisdom and practicability of the various 
reformatory schemes which have been suggested, and of 
certain proposed regulations governing appointments to 
public office. The efficiency of such regulations has been 



538 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

distrusted, mainly because they have seemed to exalt 
mere educational and abstract tests above general busi- 
ness capacity, and even special fitness for the particular 
work in hand. It seems to me that the rules which 
should be applied to the management of the public ser- 
vice may properly conform, in the main, to such as regu- 
late the conduct of successful private business. Original 
appointments should be based upon ascertained fitness. 
The tenure of office should be stable. Positions of re- 
sponsibility should, so far as practicable, be filled by the 
promotion of worthy and efficient officers. The inves- 
tigation of all complaints, and the punishment of all offic- 
ial misconduct, should be prompt and thorough. These 
views, which I have long held, repeatedly declared, and 
uniformly applied when called upon to act, I find em- 
bodied in the resolution, which, of course, I approve. I 
will add that, by the acceptance of public office, whether 
high or low, one does not, in ray judgment, escape any 
of his responsibilities as a citizen, or lose or impair any 
of his rights as a citizen, and that he should enjoy ab- 
solute liberty to think and speak and act in political mat- 
ters according to his own will and conscience, provided 
only that he honorably, faithfully, and fully discharges all 
his official duties. 

" The resumption of specie payments — one of the 
fruits of Republican policy — has brought the return of 
abundant prosperity, and the settlement of many distract- 
ing questions. The restoration of sound money, the large 
reduction of our public debt and of the burden of inter- 
est, the high advancement of the public credit, all at- 
test the ability and courage of the Republican party to 



LIFE AND SERVICES. 539 

deal with such financial problems as may hereafter de- 
mand solution. Our paper currency is now as good as 
gold, and silver is performing its legitimate function for 
the purpose of change. The principles which should gov- 
ern the relations of these elements of the currency are 
simple and clear. There must be no deteriorated coin, no 
depreciated paper. And every dollar, whether of metal 
or paper, should stand the test of the world's fixed 
standard. 

" The value of popular education can hardly be over- 
stated. Although its interests must of necessity be 
chiefly confided to voluntary effort and the individual 
action of the several States, they should be encouraged, 
so far as the Constitution permits, by the generous co- 
operation of the National Government. The interests of 
the whole country demand that the advantages of our 
common school system should be brought within the reach 
of every citizen, and that no revenues of the nation or of 
the States should be devoted to the support of sectarian 
schools. 

" Such changes should be made in the present tariff 
and system of taxation as will relieve any overburdened 
industry or class, and enable our manufacturers and arti- 
sans to compete successfully with those of other lands. 

" The Government should aid works of internal im- 
provement, national in their character, and should pro- 
mote the development of our watercourses and harbors 
wherever the general interests of commerce require. 

" Four years ago, as now, the nation stood at the 
threshold of a Presidential election, and the Republican 
party, in soliciting a continuance of its ascendancy, 



540 CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

founded its hope of success, not upon its promises, but 
upon its history. Its subsequent course has been such 
as to strengthen the claims which it then made to the 
confidence and support of the country. On the other 
hand, considerations more urgent than have ever before 
existed forbid the accession of its opponents to power. 
Their success, if success attends them, must chiefly come 
from the united support of that section which sought the 
forcible disruption of the Union, and which, according to 
all the teachings of our past history, will demand ascen- 
dancy in the councils of the party to whose triumph it 
will have made by far the largest contribution. 

" There is the gravest reason for apprehension that 
exorbitant claims upon the Public Treasury, by no means 
limited to the hundreds of millions already covered by 
bills introduced in Congress within the past four years, 
would be successfully urged if the Democratic party 
should succeed in supplementing its present control of the 
National Legislation by electing the Executive also. 

" There is danger in intrusting the control of the 
whole law-making power of the Government to a party 
which has in almost every Southern State repudiated 
obligations quite as sacred as those to which the faith of 
the nation now stands pledged. 

"I do not doubt that success awaits the Republican 
party, and that its triumph will assure a just, economical 
and patriotic administration. 

" I am, respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" C. A. Arthur." 
« To Hon. George F. Hoar, 

President of the Bepuhlican National Convention." 



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1^* The following pages contain a Catalogue of some 
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paid, to any address, on receipt of price. 



NEW DEVOTIONAL AND PRACTICAL 

With over 2500 Fine Scripture Illustrations. 

i^UR DEVOTIONAL AND PRACTICAL PICTORIAL FAMILY BIBLE is the 
Sag most perfect and comprehensive edition ever published in this country. 
^^^ In addition to the Old and New Testaments, Apocrypha, Concordance and Psalms 
in Metre, it contains a large amount of explanatory matter, compiled with great care, and 
furnishing a complete encyclopedia of Biblical knowledge. 

The following are among its leading features: 

1. A comprehensive and critical History of all the Books of the Bible. 

2. A very elegant and elaborate Marriage Certificate, with designs, etc., in seven colors. 

3. A History of all the existing Religious Denominations in the world, and the various 
Sects, both ancient and modern. 

4. Beautifully illuminated pages of the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments. 

6. A very unique Family Record for Marriages, Births and Deaths, printed in colors, 

6. The History of the Translation of the English Bible. 

7. A handsome Photograph Album for sixteen Portraits, printed in colors. 

8. A complete and practical household Dictionary of the Bible, comprising its Antiqui- 
ties, Biography, Geography and Natural History, by the great Biblical scholar, William 
Smith, LL. D. Expounding every subject mentioned in the Bible. 

J9JS" Special attention is called to the great value of this feature. Dr. Smith's is everywhere conceded 
to be the most comprehensive and valuable Bible Dictionary ever published. 

9. Over 2500 fine Scripture Illustrations, accurately showing the Manners and Ctistoms 
of the Period, Biblical Antiquities and Scenery, Natural History, etc., etc. 

10. Topographical Sketch of the Hol^ Land, with Maps and Panoramic views of the 
country as occupied by the different trib'«'. 

11. Illustrations oi Jerusalem and its environs, showing the Holy City as it appeared in 
the time of David and again in the time of Christ. The Mount of Olives, Mount Zion, etc 

12. The Wanderings in the Wilderness, with Map and Illustrations showing the Wilder« 
ness of Sinai, the Camp of the Israelites, Standards of the Twelve Tribes, etc. 

13. Illustrations of the Tabernacle and Solomon's Temple, with plans, altars, ark, golden 
eaudlestick, brazen laver, breastplate, molten sea, and the high priest in his various oflScea. 

14. Illustrations of scenes and incidents in the Life of Christ. 

15. The Cities and Towns of the Bible, showing all the important places in Palestine. 

16. Scenes in the Lives of the Patriarchs, Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament. 

17. Illustrations of the Animals, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, etc., mentioned in the Bible. 

18. Illustrations of the prominent events in the Life of St. Paul. 

19. Illustrations of the trees, plants and flowers of the Bible. 

20. Fac-similes of Ancient Coins, with a description of each, inelnding the Hebrew, 
Greek and Roman coins, with their value in gold. 

21. A Harmony of the Four Gospels, and Analysis of the Bible. 

22. A Table of contents of the Old and New Testaments, so arranged that any subject 
or occurrence mentioned in the Bible can be readily referred to. 

23. A Plan showing how the Bible may be read through in a year. 

24. A Table showing how the earth was repeopled by the descendants of Noah. 

25. Nearly One Hundred Thousand Marginal References and Readings. 

26. A Chronological Table, showing the principal events of Jewish and contemporaneoufi 
History, from the creation of the world to the present time. 

27. A Table of the Kings and Prophets of Judah and Israel, arranged in parallels. 

The following are specimens of letters that we have peceiyed from 
Clergymen and from Agents who are selling our Bible : 

Bev. W. 8. Black, of Monroe, Union Co., N. C, writes :—" Every person is delighted with yonr BIM'i 
It is the most complete, aud gives more entire satisfaction than any other Bible I ever saw. I sold 11 cvyidB 
In one day, 13 in another, and 17 in another, mostly in the finest style of binding." 

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piiAurea Impress sacred characters and scenes upon the imagination, and its maps, tables and marginal refiT. 
snces make it the best of all Commentaries. Let no family that can afford it bo without thU large, wbJ^* 
infntod, handBomely-buund and illustrated copy of the Word of God." 



fr H T*^ 

PiCTORiAi History 

OF THE 

OXtTEO STATES, 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT 

TO THE PRESENT TIME. 

Bmbracing an Account of the Mound Builders ; the American Indians ; the Dis- 
coveries and Explorations of the Norsemen, Spaniards, English, and French; 
the Settlement of the New "World ; the French and IndianWars ; the 
Declaration of Independence and the Struggle of the Revolution ; the 
^ Second "War with England ; the Mexican "War ; the Long Period 

of Peace ; the History of our Great Civil War, and the Kecon- 
Btruction of the Union under President Hayes. 

BY JAMES D. McCABE,— The Well-known Historian. 

EMBELLISHED WITH OVER 500 PINE HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 

This -work has taken rank as the Standard History of the United States. 
It is no dry mass of details— no bombastic effort to inflame the na- 
tional pride, but a clear, vivid and brilliant narrative of the events of 
our history, from the discovery of the American Continent down to the present 
time. It gives a most interesting account of the Indians of North America, 
from the time of the coming of the white men. The voyages of Columbus 
and the discoveries and explorations of the different nations of Europe are 
related with graphic power. 

Every step of our colonial history is traced with patient fidelity, and the 
sources of those noble, and we trust, enduring institutions which have made 
our country free and great, are shown with remarkable clearness. Then 
follows a clear and succinct account of our great Struggle for Independence, 
the formation of the Federal Constitution, and the establishment of the 
Union. The events of our career, from the close of the Revolution to the 
commencement of the Civil War, follow in their order. The History of our 
Great Civil War is related with intense vigor, and with strict fidelity to truth. 

COlTIDITIOasrS : 
It is comprised in one large Octavo volume of 1120 pageSy embellished with 
over 500 fine HLstorical Engravings, and will be furnished to subscribers, in neat 
and substantial binding, at the following prices : 

In Extra Fine Satin ClotJi, at $3.75 per copy. 

In Library Style, [Morocco Bach and Corners,) at 4.50 " *• 

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8ENII FOE ODE BITEA TIEMS TO AGENTS, AM A FUll JESCEIPTIOS OF TIB WOEL 

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any address, postage paid, on receipt of I*rice* 
CREATIVE jA.ND 

SEXUAL SCIENCE; 

INCLUDING 

tMMer-EGlat 

LOVE: ITS LA^VS, POVSAER, ETC. 
By Prof. O. S. Fowler. 

The work treats of "SEXUAL SCIENCE," which is simply that great code of natnral 
laws by which men and women are governed in their mutual relations. A knowledge 
of these laws is of the highest importance, and it is the general ignorance of them which 
wrecks so many lives that would otherwise be happy. 

OF LOVE, showing how it affects every relation in life; how, when properly applied, 
it is the great promoter of health and happiness ; and how, when misdirected or thwarted, 
it is the source of sorrow, sickness, vice, and death. 

OF LOVE MAKING AND SELECTION, showing how love affairs should be con- 
ducted, and revealing the laws which govern male and female attraction and repulsion; 
what qualities make a good, and a poor, husband or wife, and what given persons should 
select and reject; what forms, sizes, etc., may, and must not, intermarry. 

OF MARRL\GE, its sacred ness and necessity; of perfect and miserable unions; and 
of all that it is necessary to know concerning this most important relation in life. 

OF BEARING AND NURSING.— This portion being a complete encyclopaedia for 
prospective mothers, showing how to render confinement easy, and manage infants. 

OF SEXUAL RESTORATION.— This is a very important part of the work; because 
almost all men and women, if not diseased, are run down. The laws of sexual recupera 
tion are here, for the first time, unfolded, and the whole subject thoroughly and scientifi- 
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impotence, etc. 

IT TEI.I.S 

How to promote sexual vigor, the prime duty of every man and woman. 

How to make a right choice of husband or wife ; wh;it persons are suited to each other. 

How to judge a man or woman's sexual condition by visible signs. 

How young husbands should treat their brides ; and how to increase tlieir love. 

How to avoid an improper marriage, and how to avoid female ailments. 

How to increase the joys of wedded Life, and how to increase female passion. 

How to regulate intercourse between man and wife, and how to make it 
healthful to both; ignorancu of this law is the cause of nearly all the woes of marriage. 

How to have fine and healthy children, and how to transmit mental and phy- 
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How to avoid the evils attending pregnancy. 

How intercourse out of wedlock is injurious ; a warning to young men. 

How to restore and perpetuate female beauty, and how to promote the growth 
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There is scarcely a question concerning the most serious duties of life which is not 
fully and satisfactorily answered in this book. Such a work has long been needed, and 
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The book is pure and elevated in tone; eloquent in its denunciations of vice; and 
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It is comprised in one large royal octavo volume of 1065 pages, illustrated with nearly 
200 appropriate engravings, prepared under th^personal supervision of the author, and 
furnished to subscribers O Q ^ Q ^ 1 

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